Springfield Bioshock
by dragonkeeper19600
Summary: A city of the bottom of the ocean. It's crawling with danger, with fire, weapons, and mad men. And you, yes you, must save me. A Simpsons/BioShock parody.
1. Welcome Back to Breathing

**1. Welcome Back to Breathing**

You didn't remember what it was like to be dead.

And because of death, you didn't remember anything at all. The first thing you knew was the shock.

The advertisements always said it was painless. They knew it wasn't, but with the miracle they were promising, they also knew it didn't really matter. What did a second of excruciating pain mean when you compared it to the blissful silence of the hereafter?

It meant you were alive, that's what.

There was bright flash of blue, and a jolt that travelled from the top of your head to your toes. Every nerve jumped ten feet, every square inch, every cell, needing to be woken up individually, brought back to life with a kick. All at once, the months of sleep and decay had been undone. Your blood flowed, your lungs expanded, the signals in your brain sparked. One blue flash, one burst of cool lightning, and the world was yours again.

The second thing you knew was that you were very tired. It was understandable and… unavoidable. You had been out for quite a while. And the suit was heavy. All at once, as soon as you had held it all back, all your strength drained out of you, leaving the empty tingling feeling in your bones, not too different the feeling that comes with forgetting to eat. You fell forward, unable to hold yourself up, and your helmet hit the curved glass doors of the Chamber with a loud thunk. Then, from a speaker somewhere in the low, round ceiling, there came a cracked and grating "ding," and the doors slid open. You flopped out of the tank like a weird armored cross between a fish and a log and nearly cracked your skull against the inside of your helmet. Still, you were bruised, but you were free.

Kind of.

You lay there for a while, waiting for the feeling to come back. You had landed face-first, and you couldn't see much. All you could really see through the circular window in your helmet was the carpet, and it wasn't much to look at. It was old and worn and the nastiest shade of red you could think of, somewhere between dark, dried blood, and old, bruised tomatoes. Close up, you could see the coarse and curled fibers, detaching and twisting as they festered. There was mold, and if you squinted hard enough, you thought you could actually see the fungus spreading, sprouting little green and brown spores. Something touched your mind briefly, a wisp of a thought, not really a memory. It spoke of age and disease and destruction, of things that festered. But things were still dreamlike, still soft and unthreatening, and the wisp went quickly away.

When I said earlier that you didn't remember anything, I really meant it. Once your strength had come back, it took you ten minutes to remember what walking was and another ten to remember how to do it. After a few failed attempts where you sort of scooted around the carpet with your legs, squishing the water out of the frayed and tattered fibers with your helmet, you recalled that you need to stand up first, before you walk. So, groaning a little, you pulled yourself to your knees, then shakily to your feet, wobbling and slamming sideways into things. The wall, when you hit it, made an odd organic crunching noise. You looked and saw it was made of wood. It was terribly rotted and moist, stained by dark patches where the water seeped in. Seeped in from where? It didn't occur to you to wonder.

You stood up. You took a step, pitching and swaying, but growing steadier. Your shoulder slammed into something else. It felt like glass, spreading its cracks in little spidered veins. You looked at the damage and nearly went blind. Your eyes were being stabbed by a bright blue glow, the very same that you had just stepped out of. You could even see the little bolt of lightning, dancing in the tank like a fish, the same type of lightning that had brought you back. You half-covered the round window to your helmet and looked up.

The glass tube with the light inside was only slightly taller than you, and the ceiling only a foot higher than that. On top of the tank were the all-capped letters "VITA CHAMBER." There were wings around the name. There were wings etched thinly on the glass doors, too. Absently, you rubbed your gloved hand over them. Angel wings. Resurrection.

Subtle.

You took a step back, trying to clear your head. Somehow, though, the blue light did not fade but grew. You looked around and gasped internally.

To the left and right, as far as you could see, were dozens of Vita-Chambers, all brightly lit, all standing in silent watch. You didn't bother counting; you knew there were too many for it to matter. The carpeted hall you were in stretched in either direction for what seemed like miles. You saw, after a moment, that there were gaps in the line, spaces between rows of Chambers. You peered around the corner into one of these gaps and saw that the Chambers were not all in a line but went back in rows as well. There were several different rows, several different hallways formed by the blue tubes all standing in line. The space you were in must have been huge.

What was this place? You didn't know. You moved on, continuing straight down the hall.

It seemed you were at the front of this building, whatever it was. There were Chambers on one side and only wall on the other. Were you looking for a door, a way out? Even you weren't sure.

Far away, at intervals, you swore you could hear something tinking, the sound of metal on metal. It was distant and echoed and sounded irregularly. It grated at first, but then you stopped noticing it.

You came to a sign hung on the front wall, framed in a simple tarnished gold border. The image was a stitched pattern, trying to mimic a seamstress's hand. It said, "WELCOME BACK TO BREATHING!" just like that, in all caps, with the most adorable little blue stitched font. Sewn in, with all the little knotted threads, was a picture of a man, a worker by the look of him, in blue overalls. He had a white hard hat and was grinning broadly, holding a thumbs up. His other arm was missing, and there was a scar across his exposed chest. He was standing in front of a Vita Chamber, its interior glowing a comfortable blue. There were rainbows in the background and a happy family, a boy and a girl and a mother, all waving and smiling in front of a cute brown little house, like the kind cookies are supposed to live in.

You wondered briefly, vaguely, what this picture had to do with the sickness you had felt. Or with the shock. Or with the room you were in, for that matter.

The Chamber, at least, was shown accurately. You could even see the thin little black stitches on the yarned glass, where the etched wings were supposed to be.

You moved on.

You came across a camera, bolted high up on the wall, at the place where the boards met the ceiling. A security camera, no doubt. You looked up into it, wondering if anyone was looking back at you. There was a tiny red light next to the lens, and it threw a spotlight of clear, tinged light on you. The round glass seemed like an eye, staring right through your helmet into your soul. You felt uncomfortable. You moved on, and you heard a mechanical whirring as the camera swiveled on its hinge, following you.

You came to a vent. It was taller than you were, covered in a pattern of gold, with sun-like rays coming from the round hole in the top. You stared at it, wondering what on earth it could be for. It didn't seem like any air was coming from it. You looked into the hole and jumped back, crashing into another Chamber. Out of the darkness shined a pair of small, bright eyes, staring right at you. Was there a figure that they belonged to? You thought that, maybe, you had seen one, but you weren't sure. The eyes blinked. You blinked. They vanished. You continued to stare, mesmerized.

A second later, the darkness changed. It was still dark, still impossible to see, but it was a different kind of darkness. It was as if there was a bulky mass there, blocking the light. You leaned closer, trying to see better. As you watched, the object moved closer to you, wriggling strangely as though it were being pushed clumsily, one side at a time. You leaned in farther as the thing, whatever it was, came closer to the border of the light. Your first, very confused, impression was of a coin. Small, silver, and round, with an odd point on the face. It waved around, weaving in and out of the light, and you could hear the sides of a large mass scraping against something. Gradually, little by little, it emerged. You saw a growing circle, with rings that emerged and expanded pleasantly, one at a time.

Suddenly, with one final heave, it dropped out with a heavy thunk. You jumped back again to avoid it and stared again, more bewildered than ever. It was a drill, a huge one. Bigger than your head, bigger maybe than your torso. It was a wonder it had even fit in that vent. You looked around, confused. What were you supposed to do with this?

You moved on.

Meanwhile, though you had grown accustomed to it, you noticed the tinking had gotten louder. And was something hissing? The sound pulled in and out of your consciousness, like waves or ripples. You didn't think much of it, and you once again reached the point where you blocked it out entirely.

You came across a fish. It was small and silver, and its scales shone, still covered with a thin film of water. It was still alive. It flopped wetly, helplessly, on the moist carpet. Again, you stared. Where had it come from? You looked around. There was no fish tank around you or anything else that could explain its presence. You looked back to the fish. Idly, you flipped it over with your foot. It flopped over, helplessly compliant, and you recoiled. Where on its pointed head you had expected there to be another eye, there was only smooth skin, flowing unmarked over a soft indent in the fish's skull. The fish only had one eye. You felt uneasy. You moved on.

No doubt about it, that sound was getting louder. And that hissing… You listened to it, hard, and realized with a chill that it wasn't hissing at all. It was whispering. Someone was whispering.

You weren't alone.

As soon as you realized that, it was no longer possible for you to ignore the sound. The tinking, which was growing more and more unbearable, and the whispering. No, you realized as you got closer. It wasn't whispering at all. The person, whoever it was, was actually talking quite loudly. But there were speaking so rapidly that from a distance it sounded like whispering. What were they saying? You listened hard, but you couldn't tell. The voice wavered up and down, its volume inconsistent. It would say something, sputtering and hissing softly, then it would abruptly grow into a shout, almost a scream, then it would fade down again. Occasionally, you heard it rise several pitches and laugh, as though it had just remembered something uproariously funny.

You grimaced and tried to explain your fear to yourself. After all, you didn't know who this person could be. It could be anyone. There was no reason, really, to be afraid. They could be friendly.

Somehow, though, you knew that they weren't.

Louder, it was still getting louder. Were you getting closer? You tried to listen for footsteps, but you couldn't hear them under the yammering and the clanging. Were you walking toward each other? You shuddered and hoped not. He (it sounded like a he, though you honestly couldn't tell) was clearly on another row. You prayed that he would walk right by you, that you two would pass and nothing would happen. It didn't occur to you to turn around. You had already been in the other direction. Every gap you reached made you jump.

And then, abruptly, the voice stopped. The scraping, banging, metal sound stopped. The room was silent, save for the quiet humming of the Chambers. The silence bothered you more than the voice had. You thought, for an instant, that you wanted the voice back. Then you realized, no you didn't, you didn't know what you wanted. You just wished you knew what was going on. You kept walking, faster and faster, running even though the threat was not behind you, it was in front…

And suddenly, quite before you were ready for it, there he was.

He was standing in one of the crossroads, under one of the plain, rectangular florescent lights. You were keeping your gaze to the side, seeing the Vita-Chambers sliding past your vision one at a time, and when you reached the gap he slid right into view, as still and rigid as they were. He had been staring at that spot for a while, as if he knew you'd walk right into it. When you saw him, you stopped in place, frozen, just like he was. You thought you felt your skin try to jump right off of you. You both just stood there like that, staring, two deer caught in each other's headlights. You felt as though you'd received a hideous shock. You felt bile rise up in your throat, empty and aching and bitter.

The man you were facing now was thin. He was wearing a white hard hat and a blue worker's shirt, just like the grinning man in the knitted sign. But there was no other similarity that you could see. The man on the sign had been muscular and happy. This man had pale, pasty skin covered in sores, many open and bleeding, many bigger than your fist. His skin looked like someone had tailored it and had done it all wrong; it had been stitched too tight here, hung baggily too much there. It billowed out from under his shirt on one side, like he was melting like a candle. His eyes were so bloodshot and crossed with so many veins the whites were no longer white. They were like two red marbles, shining hideously under their blue irises. The skin on one side of his face was sagging downward, and it dragged the whole expression down with it. You could see the red flesh under the socket, and the left side of his mouth was pulled into a permanent frown. His working clothes were tattered and dirty. In one hand, he was carrying a socket wrench, the source of the clanging noise you had heard earlier. You noticed, briefly, that the metal was smoking and was covered with odd, thin patches of tiny blue crystals. It was sparkling weirdly in the light and looked oddly misted, almost as if it was frozen. It was swinging down, the man's arm hanging down limply like a swollen, fleshy pendulum.

You felt sick. You were breaking out in a cold sweat. It occurred to you that his eyes seemed to be very wide. You shivered. You wished he would blink.

Finally, he spoke. "Who're you?" he asked slowly. His voice was rough but surprisingly quiet; you never would've guessed it was the same one that made those manic shrieks. "You someone new?" he asked, his expression not changing.

Your eyes flicked back and forth uncertainly, though, of course, he couldn't see it. You had no idea what he was talking about. You finally shrugged sheepishly.

He didn't seem to react. I'm not sure whether or not he could even really see you.

Then the lights flickered. The fluorescents faded slowly in and out, giving an impression like something breathing. You looked around, startled. The entire time you'd been here, the lights had never flickered once. They had glowed steadily, none of them out, all very well maintained. Now they were fading in and out as though staying on were causing them pain.

Then, before you were ready, the power for the whole building went out.

The Vita-Chambers came back on first, but they were no help. Hundreds of bolts of bright blue neon light jumped and seared into your eyes, blinding you more thoroughly then the darkness had. You winced and squeezed your eyes shut, holding your arms in front of your visor like they were shielding you from some deadly attack. You blinked your eyes, which now seemed think and heavy like they were swimming in mucus, slowly back open. At that moment, the ceiling lights came on. You blinked again and shook your head, trying to clear it. Huge colored shadows, pressed in by the garish lights, were floating in front of your eyes, blocking your vision. No matter how much you squinted, you simply could not see. It seemed to you, briefly, that the spot where he had been a second ago was now empty, but it was impossible to tell.

Somewhere near on the carpeted floor, you thought you heard footsteps. You turned, still squinting. You still couldn't see. You thought you saw a silhouette, but everything looked liked a silhouette of itself, faded and blurry. You held your hand up flat above your visor, as if that would help your vision.

Distantly, you heard a crashing sound.

What was that flying toward you?

Suddenly, you started and ducked. Not a second too soon. Immediately, it felt like an explosion of glass and lightning had slammed into you. You felt the glass fragments pattering against your suit like rainfall, against your helmet like hail. You looked out from under your arms, shocked. One of the Vita-Chambers was laying on its side in front of you, shattered and broken. A _Vita-Chamber_ had come flying at you. But how?

You stood up on your knees and tried to peer past the flickering wreckage. You saw him, down the hall, his melted face twisted with inhuman fury, his hands held above him, the arms bent like the man holding up the sky. Another Vita-Chamber was above him, flickering as well, trailing its severed cords. You stared, astounded. This man had _thrown _the Vita-Chamber at you. You looked closely and saw that the second Chamber wasn't actually in his hands but, rather, floating above them. But how was it possible?

"No visitors!" he shrieked, and you could see bloody froth flying from his lips. "No more! GET OUT! _GET OUT!"_

Wide awake now, you scrambled to your feet and bolted down the hall. Not fast enough. You heard a whistling as the second Chamber came hurtling at you. It slammed into you with the force of a steel rhino, sending you sprawling to the floor. If it weren't for your suit, you would have been slashed to ribbons by the glass. You lay there for only a second, dazed, confused, and not a little distressed. _Why_ was this man trying to kill you? What had you done wrong? And if he wanted you to leave, couldn't he just show you to the door?

Only a second was still too long. You heard footsteps, heavy and rapid as thunder, pounding closer and closer on the moldy carpet. You made the mistake of trying to scramble to your feet and look behind you at the same time and were unable to make use of either action. You only succeeded at crawling a small distance, as though you were trying to swim against a rapid and merciless current. You saw him vault himself over the broken chambers in one movement with the agility of a wild cat. You never would've guessed that he could move like that. The stunned, half-dreaming look he'd had earlier was gone. His red, veined eyes were focused squarely on you, now, and they were murderous.

He landed in front of you, over you, and, not wasting any time, whacked the side of your helmet with the wrench. You felt your head ringing; what a powerful blow! The wrench _was_ frozen, you realized. The side of your head where the blow had struck suddenly grew cold as ice. A foggy mist blossomed over your visor on that side, crackling on the glass. You felt the cold stabbing into your skull like a sledgehammer. You winced, wishing this person would stop hitting you.

You saw, as if it were happening in slow motion, the melted man swinging his wrench up to hit you again. You really did not want to be hit again. You leaned up and swung your right hand instinctively. To your amazement, your arm actually successfully collided with his and you were able to knock it aside, so that it was stretched in front of him. He gasped, not expecting that either. As he was now, he was wide open. Still not really thinking about it, you balled your left hand into a fist and threw it up against his ribcage. You felt a rib crack under your glove. He howled and jumped back, away from you. Giving you room. In one motion, you brought your right leg up and kicked him, hard, in the stomach. The blow was so powerful that he actually flew back against the broken Vita-Chamber, slamming into it.

How had you done that? Where had you learned how? You couldn't remember, and at the moment, you didn't really care. You felt thrilled and awed. But you had learned much in the past few minutes. You gave no time to gawking but instead jumped to your feet, your hands in front of you, ready.

He wasn't dead. In fact, incredibly, he hardly seemed hurt at all. He was only dazed. He blinked heavily and looked up at you, uncomprehending. The lights from the Vita-Chambers were dancing around you, including the flickering and dying light of the broken one that he was elbows deep in. He stared at you, blinking and twitching, and you saw his eyes go even wider.

"Big Daddy?" he asked blankly. "Metal Daddy?"

You had no idea what he was talking about, but by now, you knew better than to try to find out. You took a step back and extended out your palm, flicking your fingers at him. _Come at me._

He didn't need asking twice.

He shrieked and launched himself at you, but you were ready this time. You sparred, him swinging his icy wrench, you swinging your fists. Blocking, ducking, swinging, you found that you were in your element. You were no longer scared, quite the contrary. You felt adrenaline pumping in your blood, pounding in your veins. You felt exhilarated. This beat being dead by a _long _shot.

He was able to land a few blows on you, but you were able to give back some in return. Soon, though, you found yourself growing weary of this. You felt a pool of moisture forming on your shoulder, and you figured it was probably your blood. You wished you had a way to make this end faster. Maybe a weapon, or-

_The drill! _But where was it? It must be where you left it. Without waiting, you swung your fist one more time, trying to throw him off, before you turned around and sprinted down the hall, back the way you came. He uttered an exclamation of frustration and took off after you, but you discovered, to your delight, that you were faster than he was. But not by much. You felt your boots slapping wetly against the carpet as you ran. You could see the drill on the floor, in the distance, growing closer. Suddenly, you found that you could no longer hear the melted man behind you. You heard a crunching metallic rip, and a familiar whistling. You pumped your legs faster, trying to outrun what you knew was coming. Sure enough, just behind you, another Vita-Chamber exploded against the floor, sending tiny fragments of glass out to bounce against your back. You grinned a little, feeling truly alive for the first time in months.

You reached the drill, panting, your chest feeling like iron. It lay heavily, exactly where you'd left it, gleaming in the blue and white lights. You picked it up, using both your arms. It was incredibly heavy. You turned it over and over, looking for a handle, a way to grip it. There wasn't one. You began to panic. You could hear him getting closer, shrieking nonsense at you. You turned it so that the tip pointed down at your feet and saw, where you might have expected a flat base like that of a pyramid, a hole in the gray metal, dark and perfectly round. You hurriedly stuck your arm into it, as if you'd meant to all along. Inside, you discovered, as you fumbled around desperately, a large handle, crossed with lined indents to give it a grip. You curled your fingers around this handle and found you could hold it up with one hand this way. You moved your fingers around, feeling the handle, and found a button, small and a little sharp, on the side where your thumb was. All this took place in less than five seconds.

He was coming. His shrieks were growing louder. You could hear it. You could _feel _it. Shaking, desperate, not wanting to see or think, and certainly not wanting to die, you swung the drill in his direction and squeezed the button with your thumb. At the touch of the button, the drill spun, emitted a thick brown cloud of diesel smoke. You swung it blindly, squinting, gritting your teeth, and as the drill spun and the hapless man approached, the drill found its mark.

And burrowed right into his chest.

He threw up his arms as the drill dug deeper and deeper into him. He screamed and twitched as the metal twisted and spun, mixing up blood, organs, bone. He twitched, his whole body twitched, jerked every which way by the spinning drill. Your helmet, your suit, were sprayed with blood. You didn't let up on the button. You were no longer conscious of pushing it down. You could only stare.

At last the man's eyes rolled up into his head. You gave one last frightful gurgle from lungs that no longer existed and dropped, limp and loose as a bag of soggy bones. You finally let go of the button and shook him off the end of your drill (you'd found that he was stuck). He flopped onto the ground, his head to the side, his mouth agape. You stared at him, no longer thrilled, no longer feeling particularly alive. You felt blood dripping off the end of your drill, onto the carpet, blending into the ugly color.

You felt suddenly weak, but you didn't want to sit down. So you stood, leaning against the golden vent, clutching the soaked drill to your side.

Suddenly, you heard a sound like static crackling. You started and looked around, puzzled. Where…?

"Hello?" a voice was saying. "Can you hear me?"

The voice sounded distant and a little fuzzy, as though it were coming from a crappy radio. You looked around and, it seemed, found just that, a small old-fashioned radio on the dead man's belt. You stared at it, conflicted. Should you answer it? Pick it up? You didn't really want to pick it up…

"Hello," the voice said again. "Would you kindly pick up that short wave radio in front of you?"

You stared at the radio, trying to get a feel for the voice. It was a man's voice and sounded nice enough. And so polite! "Would you kindly." How charming! And what sort of accent was that, anyway? Irish?

"Um," the voice chimed up again. Quietly, as if to himself: "Maybe he didn't hear me… I'll try again. Um!" he said, a little louder. "Would you _please_ pick up that short wave radio?"

You kept looking at the radio, still pleasantly affected by the mystery voice's manners. The speaker, meanwhile, was starting to sound exasperated. "Oh, come on! Please pick up the radio? Please? Pretty please?"

You didn't move.

"_C'mon!"_ the voice intoned, sounding truly desperate. "Look, don't make me beg! I really don't want to have to beg! Come on, just - You're looking at it! You're looking right at it! I can _see you_ looking at it! _Come on!"_

Finally, you reached down and scooped up the radio.

"Ah! There we go!" said the voice, sounding very relieved. "You were really starting to worry me. I was beginning to think you were deaf! Then I'd be in trouble!"

You held the radio, waiting. Now that he was sure you could hear him, the voice sounded hesitant. "Well…" he began uneasily. "I… Ooh…" He laughed nervously. "Boy, this is awkward. I don't really know where to start."

You waited. He took a breath and went on.

"Look," he said. "My name is Atlas. And I don't know you, and you don't me, but I need your help."

* * *

**AN: **

_Are you ready? Oh, yes._

_I understand at this point the connection to The Simpsons isn't visible. That's alright. Everything will be made clear soon._


	2. How Do You Do?

**2. "How Do You Do?"**

You didn't like looking at the body on the ground, with his lolling tongue and his arms splayed out, so you began walking back the way you had come, giving a little shudder of horror as you stepped over him. You left the drill on your arm, letting it swing in the salty air. Strangely enough, it didn't seem heavy anymore. It was almost as if you were used to carrying it. Already? You didn't spend time wondering about it.

The radio was still swinging in your left hand. Atlas seemed a little confused.

"Wait!" he called, from the end of your arm. "Where do you think you're going? I said I needed your help! Hello?"

You didn't slow down, but you did raise the radio up in front of your helmet, to show you were still listening. Through the grated speaker, Atlas sighed.

"Well," he said resignedly. "I guess that's the most I can hope for at the moment, seeing as you woke up less than an hour ago. You probably don't remember anything at all… Do you?" The last question was asked somewhat sheepishly, even hopefully. You shook your head, an action that he couldn't see, but he interpreted your silence correctly.

"Okay," he went on. "I'll take that as a no. So, I bet there's a whole mess of things your really confused about right now." You nodded. "See, you need my help, too, then! Because I've been around for the past few months, and I know what's going on around here. I could help you… understand things. Figure out who you are."

You were still walking. You came to the last shattered Vita-Chamber. You slowly clattered over it, shattering more of the glass. Going around it using the next row over didn't occur to you; you were pretty sure the door wouldn't be there.

"I've actually got your file up here on the computer in front of me," Atlas went on, and you imagined from his tone that he would be smiling. "Problem is, I can't seem to open it. It's locked or something. Some sort of firewall… Anyway, I never had luck with computers."

You had come back to the fish on the carpet. Either you or the dead man had trampled on it, mashing it into a bloody salsa. You hurried on, trying to listen more closely to Atlas.

"But I can see some basic information about you here. It says you're a Protector, part of the Alpha Series. A Big Daddy. I… I don't suppose you remember what a Big Daddy is, do you?"

You shook your head again, but it dawned on you that that wasn't the first time you'd heard those words. _Big Daddy? Metal Daddy?_

"Subject Delta." From Atlas's tone, it sounded like he was reading. "That's your name. Oh, you're one of their top models. And it says here that you were decommissioned. That's right, Delta," he said ruefully. "You've been dead. For months."

Dead? You thought for a moment. Yes, you supposed you had been. The information wasn't surprising to you, somehow. Still, you shuddered slightly. How had you died?

"Enjoying your tour of the place?" Atlas asked, not answering your thoughts. He chuckled. "A 'miracle of science,' where you're standing right now. These glowing tubes can bring ya back from the dead. You feel like shit afterwards, though. They don't tell you that part. And you don't remember anything, either. Side effects. But who exactly is going to complain? 'Course, I expect you've figured all that already."

You had.

"But nobody used these Chambers in months," Atlas went on, a frown in his voice. "This place has been abandoned for ages. That's why I was so surprised to see you flop out of there. Whoever it was who wanted you back, they sure took their time."

You looked around, surprised by that word, _See._ You peered behind the row of Chambers, looking down the distance of the second hall. Atlas laughed.

"No, no," he chuckled. "No, I'm not there in the building with you. I'm _very _far away." He said that last part slowly, as if realizing that he needed to take his time with you. You frowned a little, disliking that tone.

"This, well, this won't mean anything to you as you are now," said Atlas, "But I'm actually in the central security room at the plant across town."

You blinked. You had no idea what he was talking about.

"So," he went on. "I can see you through the security monitors here. In fact, I'm looking at you right now. Look to your right."

You did so.

"Higher."

You looked up towards the corner where the wall met the ceiling. Up there was another security camera, alike in every way to the one you had seen before. The red clear light shone into your helmet, lighting up your eyes like crisscross patterns.

"There I am!" said Atlas cheerfully. "Apparently, there's a camera in your helmet, but the damn computer won't let me use it. So I'll have to see you like this. Um, wave into it so that I know you're listening."

You stuck the radio into a pouch that you found on your arm and waved your gloved hand in what you hoped was a friendly way. Atlas sounded relieved.

"Whew! Good! I'm not talking to myself… Anymore…" the last part was said in a somewhat defeated tone.

You noticed something about Atlas. No matter what he did, be it cracking a lame joke or chuckling or saying something cheerful, something about his tone always sounded sad and weary. It was the kind of tone you would use if there were dark circles under your eyes, but you knew you had to stay awake for another three hours and you were trying not to go insane before then.

"Anyway," Atlas went on. "This seems like a good arrangement, doesn't it? The truth is, it's why I need your help. See, I'm locked in here. This place is falling apart, and the door's blocked. I can't get out on my own. I need you to come across town and get me out."

You had stopped walking to look at the camera, and now you stood in front of it, frowning. Your eyes narrowed as you stared up into the dark and opaque lens of the camera, resenting Atlas slightly. You didn't say a word, but you leaned forward and placed both your hands (well, hand and drill) on your hips. The message was clear: _Why should I help you?_

Atlas made a noise you couldn't really name. Whatever it was, you could tell he was annoyed. "Oh, so that's how it's going to be," he said, irked. "It's like I said, Delta, you need me! As you are now, you won't last ten seconds without me! I was impressed with how you dealt with that one maintenance worker they had in here. Cleaned his clock you did."

You nodded vigorously, your guilt forgotten. You his clock was _spotless,_ all right!

"But still," said Atlas, sounding coolly unimpressed now. "That was just one. And I hate to break it to you, boyo, but you barely survived. The city outside this building is crawling, absolutely _crawling_ with men and women just like him. And you remember how he was able to pick up those Vita-Chambers and toss 'em at you like it was nothing? They can all do that, Delta, and much more. And they'll gladly tear you limb from limb without so much as a 'How do you do.' You'll be dead dozens of times over before the day is out without me."

You turned away from the camera and continued your strut, waving your drill arm at the camera dismissively. You felt bitter and annoyed, but what you didn't want to show Atlas is that you were also afraid. His words had hit a nerve, and your heart hammered at the idea of having to run into anyone like the man you had fought, let alone _a whole city _full of people like him.

Besides, you didn't think Atlas could really help you. Whether he was with you or not, you were convinced that you were screwed. And why did you have to be the one to march across an increasingly frightening-sounding town to save him? You didn't want to do that.

Atlas sighed. "I told you already," he said. "That's not all I can do for you. I can help you figure out who you are. For instance…" His voice suddenly changed, as if he'd just come up with an idea. When he spoke again, his voice was more cunning. "For instance, look at you right now. Where is it exactly that you're going?"

You didn't really have an answer for him. You kept moving through the battered hall, keeping your eyes to your right.

"Funny ain't it?" he went on smugly. "Look at you, on the move. No memories, no idea what's out there, nowhere to go. And yet, you can't sit still can you? Do you know why that is, Subject Delta?" His voice had grown softer, almost to a whisper. He grew silent and let that question simmer for a while. It worked; you were listening carefully now.

"It's because you're missing something, Delta, and though you can't remember what it is, you know it. You can't stop looking for it. Right now, there's this nagging feeling in the back of your head, the feeling you get when you're missing something important. Right now, you're looking right, left, anywhere, hoping that you'll spot it. A part of you is missing, and it's driving you mad."

You realized that he was right. You looked back down the shattered hall, the way you had come, hoping to see your missing part the way he'd said. You suddenly felt very lonely. You turned around again and quickened your pace.

"I know what you're missing, Delta," said Atlas, knowing he had you. "And I'll tell you what it is. First of all, I - _DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR!"_

Atlas had screamed the last few words at you with such force and frantic desperation that you jumped. I think he'd seen you disappear off the monitor he'd been watching, and he'd heard a click. One horrible, rusted click. You'd found the door, tucked away, it seemed, in its own private room in the wall. Your hand had been on the doorknob when it seemed to you as if a very annoying bomb had gone off in your ear. Irritated with Atlas and unable to see what the whiny fuss was about, you turned the knob and opened the door.

And you were promptly hit in the face by a rhino.

No, it wasn't a rhino, you realized, as you recovered your dazed senses against the most vicious beating of your life after having slammed into the Vita-Chambers for the final time. It was water. What seemed to you to be roughly one cubic shit-ton of water was pelting you, rattling and pattering against your head, crushing your chest, pretty much hitting you all over everywhere. It streamed madly into the room, hastily flooding it as though it had been in a terrible hurry to get in and was frantically heaping abuse on you for keeping it waiting. Before long, the entire room was up to your eyeballs in ice-cold water, and it kept coming, kept filling. You held both your arms in front of your face, trying vainly to shield yourself from the onslaught. Where the hell was all this water coming from?

"_They left it open!"_ Atlas sounded astounded, his voice somehow sounding above the roar of the water. "They didn't even _lock_ it! _Goddamn Splicers!"_

Suddenly, just behind you, you heard a buzzing and crackling. It wasn't as loud as the water, but it was much closer to your ear, and you were suddenly very in tune with it. You could even _feel _the buzzing, all along your skin. You looked behind you and saw, with a feeling as though you'd swallowed your throat, that the Vita-Chamber you were lying against was shuddering and sparking, as though it were about to be deathly ill, its humming growing as loud and horrible as a dying wasp. The lightning bolt inside the tank was jarring back and forth violently, twisting and jerking and sprouting arms in convulsions of agony. You looked around the room and saw, to your horror, that every single Vita-Chamber, all of the dozens upon dozens of them, was doing the exact same thing, and the room was soon filled with so much light and noise you felt sure you'd never be able to see or hear again.

"Oh. My. God," intoned Atlas, who seemed beyond words.

You stared for a second longer. You felt frozen. Every Vita-Chamber was glowing like Christmas.

"Get out of there, Delta!" screamed Atlas. "Run!"

Run? You could barely stand! How could he expect you to run? Nevertheless, you knew he was right. The flow of water in the room was slowed somewhat, and, in your suit, you were strong. You somehow pushed past the tide and rose to your feet. Every step that you took felt as though a massive beast was pushing against you with all its might. Trying to run through water felt like trying to walk through molten lead. Slowly, your heart hammering, but powerfully, you brought yourself closer and closer to the open door. The closer you got to the opening, the harder it grew to keep moving. You gritted your teeth and grabbed one edge of the door frame with your left hand and propped your drill up against the outside of the other. And with one final heave, you catapulted yourself past the streaming current and outside.

And outside the door, suspended over the opening, feeling as though your arms were about to break, you found that it wasn't any easier to keep moving. You still felt the force of the water pushing past you, against you. So, knowing that you could go no further, you spun yourself quickly to the right, using your drill as an anchor, and stopped with your back pressed flat against the side of the building.

And you waited.

You felt it all at once. Each Chamber went off with the force of a bomb. The sheer wave of power that jolted from that building was enormous; you thought your ears would pop from the noise alone. The explosion grew in a bubble that spread out and fried the water, expanding to its full size in a tenth of an instant. It demolished the building; it lifted you off your feet. You flew back several yards, spinning head over heels over head, until you slammed into the ground, slowing to a stop against something short and hard. You lay there, stunned, and it was there that you felt the power rush over you. Outside of your suit, it would have fried you instantly. Protected by it as you were, you only felt a chattering, a numbing that travelled through you in less time than the explosion had taken. Your teeth locked up and clattered together as it passed.

Then, suddenly, everything grew quiet and still.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

_Update time! Has it been forever? I think it has._

_Sorry for the wait folks, but I'd been having a rough time lately. But now I'm back on my feet and hopefull should be updating more regularly. _

_I would also like to remind everyone that this fic has its own Tumblr page! Just to go to SpringfieldBioshock dot tumblr dot com, and you should be good. _

_So Delta__ has just woken up. And as you can tell, things are going swimmingly. Great._

_Join me soon for the next chapter. _


	3. Welcome to Springfield

**3. Welcome to Springfield**

Time stayed still, suspended as if over an abyss. You could hear a pounding in your head and feel a distinct ringing in your ears. The silence of now, compared to the ear-splitting violence of a few moments ago, seemed strange and alien, comical almost. You could feel the ground underneath you, and yet you felt the strangest sensation, as though you were floating. For a brief moment, you wondered if, maybe, you had died again.

"Oy… Delta." It was Atlas. His voice was quiet. He sounded stunned. "You alright?"

No, apparently not. Pity.

The radio was sealed up in the pouch in your arm, where you'd left it. It seemed that the pouch was waterproof. Furthermore, through some freak of engineering, it sounded as though Atlas's voice was sounding inside your helmet. After a moment's pause, you raised your fist and knocked it against where you were keeping the radio, to show that you could hear.

You heard a loud exhalation sound directly in your ear, which caused you to wince slightly. Did he have to do that?

"Christ," Atlas breathed. "Jesus Christ, Delta. What have you done?"

At these words, you felt a sharp sting of indignation. What had _you_ done? Excuse you! How were you supposed to know that opening the front door would cause the building to explode? Nobody could have guessed that! You glared violently through the strangely dark and blue window in your helmet, a gesture that, of course, Atlas couldn't see.

"Well…" he said slowly, apparently still in awe. "At least you're alive. That's the most important thing. But… But _God Almighty, _Delta!"

Hey, now. This was really too much. You sniffed, mentally gathered up your wounded pride, and, with some difficulty, began to roll over onto your hands and feet. Screw Atlas! If that's the way he was going to talk to you, then he could find his way out of whatever-it-was himself! It was difficult with your bulky suit and the fact that the air around you seemed strangely resistant, but you managed to maneuver onto your side. Your intention was to briskly get to your feet and strut off in another gesture that also would have been totally lost on Atlas.

But as soon as you rolled over again, you promptly plummeted into a ditch.

Atlas must have heard the thump because he immediately rang in again. _"Now_ what happened?" he exclaimed, sounding more and more frazzled.

You grimaced. Nothing.

"Well," said Atlas, "Whatever happened, sort yourself out quick. We don't have all day."

Hating Atlas and his stupid accent, you began the arduous process of getting to your feet. That's weird. Why was this so hard? As if the air was actively pushing against you. And why was everything so dark? You finally stood up and looked around. The ditch you were in was awfully deep, of a vague oval shape. The ground underneath your feet was uneven, with dark green plants that swayed strangely in the breeze. The rim of the ditch was at eye level, and if you strained, you could just see over the edge to the rocky soil above. The entire surface seemed to be covered with strangely white plants that swayed back and forth in the wind in that same strange way. The air seemed awfully dirty too. Various particles were floating idly in it, and it was so dark and smoggy, and there were fish, of all things, swimming through the air, and…

Wait a minute.

Were you underwater?

You stared, gaping, and felt your mouth drop open with a pop. You leaned backward, wanting to look up, and saw it. The surface. A million tiny lights, a shower of white prisms on a blue, jelly surface, flipped upside down and on brilliant display above your head. The current, having returned to its regular patterns after being violently interrupted, swayed over your head, rustling the dead grass that had once made up the lawn of the Vitality Rejuvenation Center. Bits of debris flowed by, carried by the gentle arms of the current. You noticed, suddenly, how the sound echoed more strangely in your helmet, how every movement, every noise, seemed amplified, its strength brought out by the effort it took to move through water.

"Enjoying the view, Delta?" Atlas asked. "Must be a rude awakening. Sorry. I don't even know where you are, but whatever you're seeing, I know it isn't pretty."

A fish dropped by and began nibbling on the grass directly in front of your eyes. The fish blinked its three eyes slowly, before swimming away.

You kept staring. You still couldn't remember anything, but you were pretty sure a bunch of water everywhere was not something that was supposed to happen. Your irritation for Atlas was forgotten, with nothing to replace it except:

_?_

What the heck was going on? What were you supposed to do?

You looked around, your gaze sweeping over the literal hole you were trapped in. Well, the first thing, you supposed, would be to get out of this ditch. You went up to the wall and tried to climb your way out, but you found that you simply couldn't pull yourself up underwater while wearing a heavy diving suit. Remembering your drill, you hefted it up and down a few times, testing its weight in the water, before plunging it into the crumbling wall. The button on the drill bit into your thumb as you drilled your way into the side of the wall. It yielded easily, and, using the drill as a lever, you began to scramble up out of the pit.

Atlas, who had been silent for a while, rang in again. "Okay, sorry," he said, "This is kind of a setback. You're going to have to give me a second while I figure this out. Hmm…" That last "Hmm" sounded distant, as though it was not aimed at you. You gripped the side of the pit with your free hand and hoisted yourself up, your stomach pressed against the rim of the ditch. You were frowning. Did he have to keep making that noise?

Finally, with a little more effort and slipping, you managed to scramble out. You wanted to look around, awe a little at the water all around, maybe slip a peek at the steaming crater where the Vita-Chambers used to be. But you didn't get a chance because Atlas immediately rang in again. "Oh!" he said loudly, suddenly. "Oh, I think I've got it! Alright, here's what we'll do. Whenever I ask you a question, right, you're going to tap against your radio, like you did earlier, okay? One tap for yes and two for no. Okay? Do you understand?

You raised your gloved hand and knocked three times against your radio.

Atlas paused. "Sorry, uh…" he said, "I don't think you quite understand the system. It's one tap for yes and two for no. Do you understand?"

You knocked against the radio once.

"Good," said Atlas. "Now, I-"

You cut him off impatiently and tapped three times against your radio again.

"What?" said Atlas, sounding taken aback. "What is it?"

Staring, you knocked three times again.

There was another pause, then: "Ah…" said Atlas. "Ah, I see. You're wondering where you are, right?"

You tapped once.

"Well, I'll have to guess," he said, "And I hope I'm right about this. Delta, are you in a graveyard?"

Graveyard? Yes, you supposed that was where you were. You looked back toward the hole you had just come out of, the short blunt thing that had stopped your flight. Small and gray, made of decaying stone. You bent down to see if you could read the name, but it had been eaten away, dissolved by the saltwater. A cluster of barnacles grew over the faint, illegible letters. As you watched, a crab scuttled over the stone, rubbing its face with its claws. You rose to your feet and looked around. Corroded stones dotted the dark and rotting landscape, living creatures growing and feeding over the spongy rock that had once held meaning. You noticed, as you looked, that there were many other holes like the one you'd fallen into, scarring the land like potholes.

You raised your glove and tapped once against your radio.

"Good," said Atlas, breathing a sigh of relief. (Good? What exactly is good about this?) "So the explosion didn't take you that far. Thank God. Of course they'd build the place that brings people back from the dead right next to the cemetery. Just makes sense-"

You knocked against the radio three times again.

"What?" exclaimed Atlas, having been interrupted three times, now. "What do you want? I don't understand!"

Knock knock knock. You were waiting.

"Oh," said Atlas, comprehending. "Oh, I get it. Now you're wondering…" He chuckled darkly. "Well, frankly, now you're probably wondering what the hell's going on, right?"

Tap.

I imagine that Atlas smirked. "Understandable," he said. "Well, I'm not really sure how to start, but I have a hunch. There should be a cliff somewhere near you, I think. Opposite direction of where the Vita-Chambers used to be. Walk up there and knock once when you've reached it. Be careful," he added, as a nervous afterthought. "Try not to fall off."

If there had been a jab at your competence there, you didn't notice. You were too busy staring, slack-jawed. Underwater. You were underwater. Everything felt so big, so wide and open and endless. And yet, you'd never felt more contained. Was it because of the diving suit? Because of the dark? Because of the sensation of a thousand hands pushing against you from every direction, the infinite pressure of water? Perhaps, this is what a fish in a tank feels like.

Very slowly, the only real way to move in the water, you made your way forward, continuing in the direction the blast had flung you. You knew you probably should keep your eyes down, looking for the edge, but you couldn't keep your eyes on any one thing. There was too much; there was simply too much in front of you.

Suddenly, you felt something hard knock against your shoulder. You winced, irritated, and looked upwards for the offender.

It was a sign.

A large, corroded road sign, with no road in sight, rising several feet above your head. You took a step back and looked up at it. Flowing seaweeds sprouted form every corner, fluttering back and forth like aged fingers. A pox of barnacles was clustered over the eroded face, blocking the words. Through the haze of putrid life, you could barely make out the words, _GO to the City of Tomorrow!,_ scrawled across in cheerful cursive, the paint eaten away in bites by the hungry seawater. Above these words was a swooping arrow, pointing up in a way that clearly meant, "forward."

You looked past the sign and gaped.

Just behind the sign was the cliff's edge, jagged and broken, and there, beyond, and sprawling for miles, was a city. A city in the sea.

"Welcome," said Atlas, "to Springfield."

You didn't know what to say. At the base of the cliff, surrounded by rock as if in a bowl, lay Springfield, a city you'd always known and had forgotten. It lay in the basin, sprawling, jagged and uneven, and yet there was something dead about it, too. The effect of it on you was strange. You tried to come up with the image that it brought to your mind and found it: bubbles. It was like a city of bubbles. Long, billowing tubes of… something (Plastic? Glass?) were bubbling over the buildings, covering them like plastic tunnels in a hamster cage. There were of many different sizes, some covering just one house and others covering entire streets or even entire blocks. The whole effect gave the city a look like it was in motion, frothing like a potion in a cauldron. And yet, it was oddly frozen, too. One thing that you felt vaguely was that cities were supposed to be bright, full of motion. And yet this city was dark, with only a few bursts of ghostly light flaring up here and there. At some places in the bubbles, you could tell there was motion, but it wasn't the movements of a vibrant town. It was more small and scrambling, bringing to mind the twitching of bacteria under a microscope.

You stared at the spectacle. Some sort of feeling was welling up in you, a feeling you couldn't name or place. Springfield, whatever it was, was dark. It was scary. It was exceedingly unwelcoming.

You didn't want to look away.

Then: another thought. This was the city that was crawling with people like _him._

"Beauty, isn't it?" said Atlas sardonically. You knocked twice against your radio. He laughed. "I know, Delta. I know," he said. "Believe me. But you've got to admit, it is amazing isn't it? A city sinking into the sea? Oh sure, you hear about it all the time. Atlantis. Helike. Venice. Mexico City. But actually having it happen in your own town… And having someone to blame for it…. Well, that's something else."

Your head was swimming, despite your helmet. Sinking? _Blame?_ What the hell?

"Alright, Delta," said Atlas. "Now, do you see… Uh…" He searched for the right words. "A pair of, um, red lights? Sort of… Flickering… _Way_ in the distance, there?"

You squinted and held your free hand flat against the top of your visor, even though that wouldn't help your vision any. The edge of the city was almost beyond your sight, but then… Yes! A pair of ghostly red lights, wavering strangely in the water, apparently blossoming from two large dark tubes sprouting against the backdrop in the distance. You knocked once against the radio.

"Good," said Atlas. "Well, that's where I am."

You felt your stomach sink. Was this some kind of cruel joke?

"I know, I know!" said Atlas hastily. "I know it's daunting. And I know you probably don't want to, but you're the only chance I've got! And, like it or not Delta, _I'm_ the only chance _you've_ got."

Oh, who was it that had woken you up? Why would they go to all the trouble? It hardly seemed worth it.

"Look," said Atlas, sighing, "There should be an apartment complex somewhere to your left. Let's get you out of the cold and wet, and I'll get you up to speed. Be careful."

Still apprehensive, you turned and made your way in the direction he indicated, making sure to stay clear of the cliff face. You dared not peak down; the rocks did look quite sharp, and although your suit could probably handle it, you didn't want to take the risk.

Meanwhile, Atlas had continued speaking.

"First thing you should know," he said, "Is that, uh, you should exercise caution. The Vita-Chambers back there were the only things on the planet that could bring you back from the dead, and you just destroyed every single one. _But,"_ he added hastily, sensing that this news probably wasn't helpful, "But that's alright. You're here now, so you'll have to be extra careful to avoid… whatever it is that killed you last time. Don't worry. You'll be fine, as long as you do what I say."

You shuddered. This wasn't the best pep talk. But, fine. Fine. If Atlas could get you out of here, then so be it. Now what?

"Second thing you should know is we are under the ocean. All the buildings in the city should be equipped with a drainage station to ensure safe passage in and out without risk of flooding. Now, I didn't see it, but I'm guessing that one of the Splicers didn't follow proper draining procedure, which is why the Rejuvenation Center – that building you just obliterated – flooded like that. So, now that you know, you're going to have to watch out for that. Ah, here we go."

The apartment complex, a large, rather severe looking building with its own personal bubble billowing over it like a plastic wrap, was waiting just ahead of you. As you approached it, you noticed a dark, smaller bubble on the side by the door opening like an eye, revealing a camera lens. A tiny red light blinked to life beside it. You noted the camera briefly before coming up to the door, wincing slightly as your hand closed around the knob. You expected another surge of water, a blasting cannon that would go off and slam you inside, perhaps causing another explosion. But, to your immense relief, the door opened quite effortlessly, with no catastrophe at all. The small chamber that it led to was also filled with water.

"Close the door behind you, Delta," said Atlas.

You did so, sealing yourself in the tiny room with only the water and the dark. A light switched on outside your helmet, and in its glow, you took note of your surroundings. This chamber was as overgrown as anything else and seemed to be covered with a lot of pipes and machinery. On the other side of the chamber was another door. A caged red light just above began blaring as soon as the door was shut, flooding the chamber with a slow, hellish strobe.

"Alright," said Atlas. "Now, there should be a lever on the wall somewhere. Pull that, then open the door."

You looked and quickly found what he was talking about: a large metal lever posed over two words lit from behind in vivid shades of white and blue. You grabbed it and switched it from its current position "FLOOD" to the other side: "DRAIN."

Immediately, a flurry of bubbles filled the room, rushing madly up to the ceiling, which strangely enough seemed to be getting lower. You realized that the water level was dropping, the surface of the water, approaching you like a curtain until it draped over your head and vanished through the floor out of sight. The red light above the far door switched to green as a loud pinging sound was heard.

"Good," said Atlas. "You can open the door now."

You walked over to the door and opened it, looking in as it swung away from you. You blinked, squinting. The interior of the building was darker than the chamber you had just exited. Heck, it was darker than the sea outside.

"Come on in. Don't be shy," said Atlas. "And close the door behind you, Delta, that's very important."

You reached behind you and shut the door. As you did so, you heard a sucking sound and then a sort of muted echoing as the chamber behind you filled up with water.

You stood a second more, trying to figure out what to do. You seemed to be in a kind of lobby. A long-abandoned desk stood in front of you, manned by an empty chair that looked slightly burned, the upholstery spilling out onto the moldy carpet. There were several hallways spreading out in front of you, all of them coated with peeling wallpaper and shattered lights. You weren't sure which one to take.

"Make yourself at home, Delta," said Atlas. "But keep your wits about you. They could be anywhere."

You listened closely for a minute. You couldn't hear anything other than the drip, drip, drip of busted pipes and your own breathing. On a whim you walked up to the front desk and began shuffling through the papers on top. All of them were moldy and soggy and came apart in your hands. Most of them seemed to be newspapers. You tossed them aside and picked up a pamphlet for the apartment complex. "HAL ROACH APARTMENTS," it said. "WHY WAIT TO DIE TO LIVE HERE?" You flipped through a few pages, found it uninteresting, and threw that aside, too. Spotting a few rotten drawers underneath, you opened one and saw, tossed into it rather hastily, a bundle of dollar bills, equaling five dollars in all. You thought for a moment before pocketing them and continuing on your way.

There were four hallways you chose from. After trying in vain to remember how "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe," was supposed to go, you opted for the one on the right side, behind the desk.

The hallway you had chosen was lined on each side by doors, each one with a name posted above. You looked at each one, your eyes flickering back and forth as you read. "Grimes." "Shutton." "Albertson." "Shearer." So many people. And yet not one of them was here now. Out of curiosity, you opened one door and were greeted by a flickering TV in the dark and a storm of flies, which buzzed ravenously around a hidden something on the carpet. You closed the door and moved on.

Eventually, after several minutes of this, you came across a sort of relaxation area, peppered with big, eviscerated armchairs and small elbow-side tables, some still coated with molding TV dinners. All the chairs faced a blocky, rather antiquated TV, which showed a flickering blizzard of soundless static.

You heard a whirring on the wall next to you, and you jumped, pumping and twisting your drill. But it was only another security camera, identical to the one you'd seen before, blinking its bright red eye at you. The lens swiveled behind the glass, zooming in, but to you, it seemed almost as if the camera was winking.

"Afternoon, Delta," said Atlas.

You waved at the camera and began looking around the room. The camera swiveled on the wall, following you.

"Well, this seems as good a place as any to get you up to speed," said Atlas. "Seems quiet for now, so I guess I should start explaining. I… Eh?"

Atlas stopped, presumably puzzled, as you had just gotten on your hands and knees and seemed very focused on something. With your drill propped up on one side, you were feeling around underneath one of the armchairs, tongue stuck between your teeth in concentration.

"What are you-?" Atlas began to ask, before, with a grin, you grabbed the prize you'd seen and pulled yourself to your feet. In your hand was a bag of chips, the contents smashed into powder, and a cream-filled cake in a paper wrapper, a little stale but still edible.

"Oh," said Atlas, as if he'd forgotten something. "Oh, of course. Sorry, I forgot about that. You just woke up. Of course you'd be… Go ahead. I'll wait."

You didn't need telling twice. Facing away from the camera, you lifted open the window on your helmet and popped open the bag of chips, inhaling the salty smell and bits that flew up into your nose. You gobbled that down, keeping your hands together to prevent any of the precious crumbs from falling, before starting on the cake. Looking around for something to drink, you spotted a bottle of Duff beer sitting on one of the tray tables, the red and white label peeling away. You picked it up and examined it. The bottle had obviously been sitting there a while. It was half-empty and had long gone flat. You chugged it down without a second thought. Satisfied, you tossed the bottle aside and closed your helmet.

"There," said Atlas. "Feeling better?"

You shot the camera a thumbs-up.

"Good," said Atlas. "So you're fed and watered. Now we can... Delta, are you listening?"

You weren't. Oh, you had been. Now that you had eaten for the first time in... You didn't know how long (Several months, according to Atlas. Now there's a scary thought.), everything was so much clearer. It was easier to think, easier to move, easier to see.

And as you were looking around, enjoying your newfound clarity, that's when you saw it.

It was a poster, worn and nibbled just like everything else, but still remarkably legible. It hung, in muted greens and pinks, in a gilded tacky frame, right next to the TV. You walked over to it, staring. Behind you, the camera swiveled, and the red light from its eye fell onto the poster.

"Ah," said Atlas. "I see."

Printed onto the paper, in a colorful, cartoonish style, was a picture of a little girl, grinning coquettishly, showing off all her pearly whites, posing with what looked like an angel, a figure with wings and a halo and large X's over his eyes, lying vertically in front of her. The girl was holding what looked like a syringe, pointing it right at the angel's neck. But none of that was what really struck you. Posing next to the girl, standing diligently over her with his hand flat against his visor was a man in a diving suit. Above the image were the words, "Always Safe with Daddy."

"Like it, Delta?" said Atlas. "I hope so. That's you."

You. You touched the surface of your helmet than touched the image of the diver on the poster. Always safe with Daddy. Always safe with you. Suddenly, you felt that feeling rushing up to you again. That feeling of emptiness. Of something missing. You looked around, hoping to find your missing thing, before looking back at the little girl smiling on the paper. You put your hand over her image, hoping maybe the ink could make it real.

"Aw, jeez, boyo," said Atlas. "You're actin' like a puppy without its mama."

You look back toward the camera, making the biggest, most watery eyes you could muster. Atlas sighed.

"Well, you've no doubt guessed by now, but that's what you've been missing. Your Little Sister."

You stared at him, frowning. He went on: "Oh, she's not really your sister, obviously. That's just their name for 'em. See, they're these little girls that have got slugs in their stomachs, and you've got to protect them from people while they-" He suddenly stopped. "You have no idea what I'm saying, do you?"

You paused, then slowly knocked against your radio twice.

"Augh, alright, let me see. Where do I start? Wait." The camera suddenly swiveled over to one of the tray tables in front of you. Sitting on top was a single black cassette tape, still in pretty good condition.

"There!" said Atlas, sounding very satisfied. "That should explain everything! Way better than I can. Take that and put it into the VHS over there." With that, the light from the camera swept from the tray table to the TV and back again.

You picked up the tape and did as he asked, feeding it into the player and pressing play. Then you went over to one of the decomposing chairs, the one right in front of the TV, and sat down eagerly.

And you waited.

After a few seconds, the TV reluctantly flashed the word "Play" in the upper corner in jerking, green letters before the static scrolled by faster and faster until a single image replaced it. It was a smiling character in a pink cowboy hat, whose body seemed to you to be made out of strings and bits of beads. A speech bubble erupting from the character's mouth read, "A Springfield Reminder!" in the same looping cursive as before. This image flickered then dropped out of sight, revealing a symbol that you didn't recognize, a sort of rounded triangle with black shapes cut out in the middle. You tried to figure out what they were supposed to represent. Maybe it was a fan. Or maybe an angel.

All the while, a rather catchy little jingle was playing over the television's crackling speakers. You found yourself bobbing your head along to the tune.

"Cute," said Atlas drily. "Cut to it, already."

The symbol soon faded away and was replaced by a sweeping view of the city you had seen outside. It was still underwater, but it looked much better on the screen, more colorful and livelier, with shapes and energy moving underneath the haze of the domed bubbles. Or maybe the city looked exactly the same, and it was the jazzy, grand soundtrack that was enhancing its look. As the camera moved over the saran-wrapped spires and towers, the music added to its every view, making the act of watching a crappy tape seem like an epic journey.

"Springfield," a sultry female voice sighed. "The city of tomorrow. In the span of just over a year, we've managed to evolve from just another Anytown, USA into the forefront of technology of the entire world."

Oh, you thought. How impressive.

"But just what is the source of this miracle?"

You shrugged.

On the screen, the camera panned into two curved cylindrical towers, from which a faint red haze was emanating. "Let's ask Burns Corp. CEO Charles Montgomery Burns for the answer," said the narrator, sounding far too excited at the prospect. Atlas must have agreed because he made sort of a weird noise in the back of his throat.

The film abruptly cut to the interior of a factory of some kind. The facilities there were like nothing you had seen so far. They were clean and sparkling, the floors spotless, and none of the tiny lights that flashed across the machinery were broken or stained at all. Sitting in front of all this, in an luxurious armchair that seemed more like a throne, was a skeleton of a man who looked to you as though he could use a good run in the Vita-Chambers. He had narrow, suspicious eyes, and a long, narrow nose that might remind one of a vulture. He was balding on top, and everything about him, from the pale pallor of his skin, to his long spider-like fingers, gave the impression of a stomach forever emaciated, forever wanting more.

He was also, it seemed, bored out of his skull. He wasn't looking at the camera, but was looking somewhere off to the side, holding his chin in his hand, arm propped up on the arm of the chair. His fingers were tapping against his leg in a rapid-fire insect-like way.

From off-camera came the sound of someone clearing their voice, then a hand flapped in front of the screen, apparently trying to draw the man's attention. "Sir!" a nasally voice hissed.

"Eh, what?" the man asked, looking up vaguely.

"Camera," the voice hissed back. "We're rolling."

The man gave an odd sort of jerk and hissed between his teeth: "What, ch-! Why didn't you-?"

"Sir!" the voice implored.

"Sir's" eyes widened as he looked right into the camera, and he abruptly took on a much more casual pose, folding one leg over the other and curling his hands in his lap. He shot the screen a smile that could curdle milk. Not missing a beat, he spoke right to the camera. "Hello, friends," he said, keeping that same grin. "I am C. Montgomery Burns, CEO of Burns Corp. and the, uh, _main man_ here in this fine city."

He gave out a few more hiccupping pleasantries, clearly suffering from missing his cue. In your ear, Atlas hissed, "That's him, Delta. That's the man who sank Springfield."

"Now what you might be wondering," said Burns, pointing playfully at the camera, "Is how Springfield has managed to rise to the top so easily. Well, it's all thanks to this little fellow right here." He then twisted in his chair and reached for something behind it. Your eyes scrunched together as he pulled up a small tank filled with water and set in his lap. Inside the tank, sucking lazily on the bottom, was a large, fat sea slug, its black tubular body twitching. On its back were several spots of dark red, which flashed rhythmically as it fed. You frowned, utterly confused.

Mr. Burns lay a hand affectionately on the tank. "This little fellow is an ADAM sea slug, a very special slug that lives right here in Springfield. It's found nowhere else in the world and is the only species of animal to ever have a patent. Or at least it _was…"_ he added rather darkly. "Now, this slug may seem unremarkable, even boring to today's hip youth, but I have discovered that this slug possesses a wide array of health benefits."

Mr. Burns set the tank down on the floor and continued. "You see, once the slugs are _extracted _from the sea floor," he said, clenching his fist at the word. "They can be milked for a very useful juice that I have called 'ADAM.'"

At these words, Mr. Burns reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial of some sort of glowing red liquid, which he swirled in front of the camera, as if he were showing off a children's fruit drink.

"ADAM," he said, "is a wonderful, magical substance that possesses many miraculous properties. This stuff can cure cancer, weakness, idiocy, impotency, anything that you feel is lacking about you or your life, and I'm _sure_ there are many, _many _things, can be cured with a few doses of this.

"What's that?" he asked suddenly, cupping a hand around his ear in a show of mock listening. "You don't _believe_ me? Why, you shouldn't have to listen to me prattle on like this! I'll show you!" He held his hand beside his mouth and shouted off camera, "Send the subject in."

A very small, bald man with huge round glasses shuffled in, looking weak and vaguely confused. Mr. Burns smiled at him then looked to the camera. "As you can see, this man is one of the most pathetic specimens these species has ever produced."

"Oh…" said the bald man disconsolately, adjusting his glasses.

"However, with just a few doses of ADAM, even this shrunken dwarf can become a Hercules!" With that he turned and lazily held out his hand. From the edge of the screen, another man instantly came up and placed an empty syringe in his hand before hurriedly scooting off-camera. Mr. Burns opened the top, dumped the contents of the vial into it, and held it up in front of the man. "Hold out your arm!" he said cheerfully.

The tiny man looked startled. "Um," he mumbled. "My manager didn't say anything about-"

Mr. Burns frowned, impatient, and stuck the syringe directly in the man's forehead. "Ow," the man whined. Looking as though it cost him considerable effort, Mr. Burns pushed down on the top button, pushing all of the bright red liquid directly into his forehead. Once it was empty again, he yanked it back out with a satisfied jerk. The needle popped slightly as it exited his skin.

"Now," said Mr. Burns, "How do you feel with just one dose of ADAM in your no-doubt inbred blood?"

"Um…" the man said. His eyes were widening. He reached a hand up to adjust his glasses, then, in a swift and startling move, threw them away. He looked around blinking, as if for the first time, he comprehended where he was. He lowered his hand in front of his face, then, in one motion, lifted the armchair, with Mr. Burns, up into the air with one hand before setting it back down. "I feel wonderful," he said slowly, in awe. "It's just like the days before the alcohol…"

"Yes, fascinating," grumbled Mr. Burns, trying to smooth out his suit after being lifted into the air. "Well, I think that proves my point. Take the mumbling looby away."

A pair of goons came up and escorted the tiny man away. "Now all will bow before the Mole," he mumbled vaguely, shaking his fist.

"Poor bastard," said Atlas, in your ear. "He has no idea."

"So you see," Mr. Burns continued, clapping his withered hands together, "The instant and miraculous benefits of ADAM. And over time, the effects will grow in magnitude, making you twice the man you've dreamed of being.

"But this sadly leads me to my next point. ADAM slugs, as you can see," he said, gesturing to the tank in which the slug was snoozing, "Are sadly not very big and are too thick to know that it's in their best interest to reproduce faster than we can harvest them. So, with ADAM in such high demand and such short supply, we've had to come up with an alternate method to create ADAM. That, of course, my dear friends, is why we need the Little Sisters."

"This is where you come in, boyo," said Atlas. You redoubled your attention.

"Now, there have been _some,"_ Mr. Burns narrowed his eyes and put a rather sinister stress on that word, "Who view this particular method of ADAM generation to be 'inhumane.' So to set the record straight, here is one of our delightful Gatherers to tell you how much fun she has on the job. Bring in the girl!"

You watched eagerly, but then sat back disappointed when you saw the girl they brought on screen. She was in a small purple dress and seemed to be around eight years old. She had a skin color that indicated she had once been tan, but a long time under the ocean had sucked the color away, leaving a sickly pallor. She had shoulder-length curled brown hair and seemed incredibly nervous to be in the presence of Mr. Burns. She stood at the far end of the frame from where he was, holding her hands behind her back and swaying from foot to foot on the spot.

From off-screen, a feminine hand appeared and nudged the girl slightly forward. She took a small stumble, looking over her shoulder for some sign of rescue, before taking another tentative step toward Mr. Burns. Mr. Burns, meanwhile, was flashing her a smile that certainly would not encourage any child to come closer.

"Now, then, my dear," he said, in a voice that was clearly meant to be sweet and comforting, but which was neither of those, "Can you tell me your name?"

"Um," the girl said, staying as far from him as she could, "Janey?"

"Well, Janey," said Mr. Burns," Can you tell these good people here what you do?"

"I…" she said, her eyes darting back and forth. "I gather ADAM."

"Excellent," he said, touching his fingers together. "Are you a good Gatherer?"

"Yes, Mr. Burns," she muttered, scratching her foot against the floor.

"And is your job dangerous in any way?" he asked her, leaning in on one elbow.

She hesitated a moment before looking off-camera and abruptly shaking her head. "No," she said.

"And why's that?" asked Mr. Burns.

"Because…" Her eyes flicked to the camera once more. "Because the Big Daddies protect me," she answered.

_Big Daddy. Metal Daddy. Always safe with Daddy. _

"You see?" said Mr. Burns, addressing the camera. "Our dear little ragamuffins are never in danger, as long as Big Daddy's on the job! After all," he said, turning back to Janey, "You wouldn't want any of these busybodies keeping you from doing your job, would you?"

Janey's lip quivered, and she looked at Mr. Burns as though she were about to burst into tears. Then, out of nowhere, she ran up to him, and there was a sickening crack as her foot connected with his shin. Then, quick as a flash, she ran out of sight. "Why that little-!" Mr. Burns gasped, as someone off-camera cried out. The camera shook slightly and abruptly cut away.

In your ear, Atlas chuckled. "Ah, I never get tired of that," he said.

What appeared on the screen now was a low-budget cartoon of some kind, depicting another little girl in rather crude line art. The reel played, showing her with a long needle in her hand, lowering it repeatedly into a puddle of ADAM on the floor.

"All throughout Springfield," the misty female narrator continued, "Little Sisters are hard at work gathering ADAM for your friends and family."

Suddenly, from the side of the image, another crude figure, wearing a wicked, hungry smile, approached the scribble of the little girl. The second figure looked to you to be a very ugly man, with jagged teeth, tattered clothes, and welts all over his body.

"Splicer," whispered Atlas.

You remembered the man with the wrench in the Rejuvenation Center, and you shuddered. On screen, the girl looked up from her task and gasped, as the words, "Oh no!" appeared in a bubble above her.

"But," said the narrator, continuing on, "There are some greedy people who simply can't wait for their ADAM and will try to hurt the diligent Little Sisters to get it before everyone else."

At these words, the Splicer scribble slowly edged towards the Little Sister, as she let out a poorly drawn scream. "Help me!" read the bubble above her head. Sitting in your chair, you suddenly felt your stomach turn. You clutched the edges of your chair with you left hand and began to regret the stale cake and flat beer you'd swallowed before.

"Luckily," said the narrator, "Big Daddy is here to save the day!"

At these words, there was a red and yellow flash, and superimposed over the entire screen was a drawing of a man in a diving suit. His image flashed on the screen for a few more minutes before the screen cut to an image of the "Big Daddy" upper cutting the hapless Splicer, who flew away head over heels and vanished into a pinprick in the distance. The next image was of the Little Sister hugging the leg of the Big Daddy, as a flurry of poorly rendered hearts floated above her head.

"Remember," said the narrator, "Big Daddy will do whatever he can to keep his Little Sister safe. Don't be the impatient person who harasses he Little Sister." An image of the Splicer reappeared on the screen with an ominous "thunk," crossed out by a large, angry red circle. "Reminder:" said the narrator, "Do not approach the Little Sister."

"Keep that in mind, Delta," Atlas whispered. "No one crosses a Big Daddy."

The cartoon flickered, and the next image that appeared was of Mr. Burns, in the same facility he had been before. This time, however, there was another much younger man on his knees in front of him. The younger man was wearing glasses and a bowtie and looked as though he hadn't slept in several days. He was wrapping what looked like gauze around Mr. Burns' leg, and he seemed totally absorbed in his task.

"Mmm…" he was muttering quietly. "Definitely broken."

"Blasted little urchin," hissed Mr. Burns. "Why can't we keep them on leashes? You wouldn't let a hound run free without discipline…"

Suddenly, Mr. Burns looked up and must have noticed the camera was running because he abruptly let out a noise of surprise, and began brushing off the man in the glasses. "Gah! It's running!" he hissed through his teeth. "Smithers, get out of here! Get!"

Smithers jumped back and took to his heels. Mr. Burns lowered his pant leg and cleared his throat. "Mm, yes," he said shiftily.

Something about these people seemed awfully familiar, but you couldn't put your finger on it. Remember. Try to remember.

"Um, anywho," Mr. Burns continued, "Now you know the truth about the Little Sisters, our perfectly safe, hardworking little friends. And remember, you poverty-stricken sheep," he added sweetly, "Any man can become more thanks to Burns Corp."

From off-camera, Janey ran up behind Mr. Burns' chair and tipped it over, dumping Mr. Burns onto the floor. There was a bit of commotion, yelling, and camera-shaking before the screen cut back to the same green cowboy character from before and then to static.

"Well," said Atlas, "I think that explained it rather well. Better than I could have. Obviously sugarcoated of course, making it all seem so cutesy. Didn't tell you that the Big Daddies will pull the arms off of anyone who so much as looks at a Little Sister funny, or that ADAM will ravage your body until you're a mutated freak, or that the Little Sisters are torn away from their mummies and daddies and made into slaves. Burns has ravaged the whole city and flushed it straight down the crapper. Literally! Look at where we are!"

You looked up from the static-filled screen to the dank interior around you, crawling with mold and flies, dripping with sea water slowly leaking in from the outside, and you were filled with an anger so deep you felt you couldn't breathe. You imaged the Splicer back at the Center, his lolling tongue, his melted flesh, his body and mind ruined by the ADAM, by the juice the Little Sisters were being forced to gather, and you imaged your drill eating into the face of whoever was to blame. No, not whoever. You knew exactly who was to blame.

"That recording was made ages ago," said Atlas, as you stood up from your chair. "And since then, the whole city's gone to hell. You're not the only person who lost their life, Delta. Many others have followed you. Anyone with half a brain in this city is long gone." Atlas suddenly gave out a dark laugh. "Including Burns, the bastard. Disappeared months ago. Nobody's seen heads or tails of him since. Good riddance."

You felt your fist clenching. So that's how it was, was it?

"So, Delta," Atlas said. "Do you know what you've got to do?"

To answer, you turned and faced the camera through which, several miles away, Atlas was watching you on a tiny monitor. You raised your drill up in front of you, and as the button bit into your thumb, the drill spun and roared hungrily in the air. Atlas cheered.

"That's the spirit, boyo!" said Atlas. "Nothing's keeping you down this time."

You nodded.

"So," said Atlas triumphantly, "Here's the plan. Obviously, you realize, you're a Big Daddy. A Protector. And, as a Big Daddy, you won't leave here without your Little Sister. Strictly speaking, you can't. There's some sort of bond due to the ADAM that's keeping you from leaving as long as she's here. But the fact that you're alive means that she's alive. So, here's what we'll do. We'll find your Little Sister. I don't know where she is or what she's doing, but I know she's alive. And once we've found her, then you can come and rescue me, and the three of us will escape. We're getting out of this hellhole, Delta. All three of us."

You pounded your drill in your other hand, watching as the sparks flew from the padded armor. Yes, you decided. You'd find her. Your missing piece. And you'd escape. That man on the screen wouldn't have the last laugh. You would find a way.

And that is how you decided you would come and save me.

* * *

**AN: **

_Whew, that was a long one. Got a lot of information out of the way._

_Also, yay! Named characters from the show! Well, technically, Atlas and Subject Delta are characters from the show, too. I just haven't revealed which ones yet. Oh, I love it when I'm nasty._

_Once again, please follow this fic's blog on tumblr at springfieldbioshock dot tumblr dot com. I'll be posting a bunch of bonus stuff there, so you definitely don't want to miss out. _

_Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! Please review!_


	4. The Stakes

_Okay, I've changed the rating from T to M in this chapter because things get kind of disturbing here. If you're bothered by gore, body horror, bees, or lotus seed pods, I just want to give you a heads up. Also, I've changed the genre from "Parody" to "Horror" for a similar reason. You've been warned._

* * *

**4. The Stakes**

"Oh, for feck's sake!" Atlas was whining. "You just ate less than ten minutes ago!"

You scowled, annoyed, and fed another dollar into the vending machine. Stupid Atlas. Wasn't it his bright idea to scrounge for supplies? Besides, you were still hungry. More than hungry, you were ravenous. You had been ever since you'd woken up. Surely Atlas could understand that?

After you had decided to rescue me, with a roaring glint in your eye, you had suddenly become aware that you had no idea where to start. It was then that Atlas had suggested looking around the apartment complex for anything useful. The place seemed relatively quiet, after all, he had reasoned. You might not get another chance like this.

He soon came to regret that decision, as there didn't seem to be much around the complex but food. No weapons. No maps. Not even any spare change. Just food. It was scattered pretty much everywhere, a crushed cream-filled cake smushed against the carpet, the scattered crumbs of a Pep Bar lying on top of a knotted quilt, a slightly dented bottle of water lying on its side under a desk drawer. A lot of it was rancid or diseased, but many scraps were still edible. You should know; you insisted on checking. Every. Single. One.

And when you did find something at least somewhat presentable, you would not move an inch until it was all gone. "Couldn't you take it with you?" Atlas had suggested, a hint of exasperation in his voice, but you wouldn't be rushed.

Then you had come across the vending machine. It was the lights that caught your eye. The place was so dark, so desolate, and yet, like a light at the end of the tunnel, you had seen the magnificent glow of the machine's neon lights, beckoning to you in all their splendor. As you approached it, you saw that the neon bulbs outlined the shape of what looked like a clown, smiling at you with a vaguely unsettling open-mouthed grin. "Circus of Values," was the name, scrawled out in the same bright fluorescence.

Suddenly, the five dollars in your pocket had seemed very heavy. The moment you inserted the first dollar, the machine had bellowed at you, "Welcome to the Circus of Values!" startling you slightly and making Atlas groan.

"Need I remind you," Atlas was saying now, "That we are a little pressed for time? I mean, we don't know what – Hang on," he suddenly said to no one in particular. "What was that?"

There. That was all five dollars. You knelt down and excitedly surveyed the list of options. Let's see… There was a bottle of cola; that was three dollars. And… Ooh! A can of potted meat! That was two. That would be the whole five dollars. Pleased with yourself for being able to remember that, you pushed both buttons, and, with a clunk, the machine deposited both treats.

"No, where is it…?" Atlas was saying. For some reason, his voice sounded a little distant. You meanwhile, were twisting open the lid on the can of meat. You quickly gobbled down the contents, noting that the food from the vending machine seemed fresher than the food you'd found on the carpet.

"Damn it," Atlas muttered to himself. Then: "Delta, listen. I need you to stay in that area for a while."

Well, alright. You weren't in a hurry. You popped open the lid on the cola, and as you did so, you reflected that it would be nice to have another Pep Bar. You know, while you were waiting. So, not really thinking at all, you reached forward and pressed the button next to the little picture of the snack.

An ear-splitting buzzer suddenly sounded, making the glass in your helmet vibrate. You jumped back, startled, the cola flying out of your hands and shattering on the floor. Too late, you remembered that you didn't have any money left.

"HEY! _HEY!_ COME BACK WHEN YOU GET SOME MONEY, PAL!" the machine buzzed angrily.

"No, _shhh!"_ hissed Atlas. "Keep it down; it'll hear you! Shit, where did it go?"

He continued muttering and clucking to himself, as you slunk away from the machine, your shoulders hunched. Stupid. And after you had just figured it out, too. Stupid, stupid.

So, contrite and a little embarrassed, you crept away from the machine and around the corner, into the dark hallway beyond.

And as soon as you did, you almost trampled right over a little girl.

You leapt back in surprise as soon as you felt her knock against your shin, and she cried out slightly and fell back against the filthy carpet. You cringed slightly and reached out to her, but luckily, she wasn't hurt. As you looked down at her, for a moment, you felt something inflating like a balloon in your chest, but then she looked up into your helmet, and the feeling died down with a hiss of disappointment. No. She wasn't right, either.

Your hand was out, ready to help her up, but she scooted away from you, pushing back against the carpet with her heels and the balls of her hands. You were struck by how dirty she was, how ragged. Her pale skin, her tangled white-blonde hair knotted up in a painful looking ponytail, her sunken in eyes, and her tattered, unwashed dress all combined to give the girl an appearance of a frightened animal, hounded and tormented at every turn. She squinted up into the bright spotlight coming from your spotlight and shielded her face with her forearm, the action of a mouse caught in a trap.

At that moment, she must have realized who you were because she gasped and flushed slightly with embarrassment. Before either of you could say a word, she pulled herself to her feet and ran away into the darkness. Without thinking, you rose to your feet and ran after her, not wanting to catch her, just wanting to know. You turned down another hall on your right, and saw her there, clambering up the foot of a large, gold, familiar-looking vent. As you watched, she scrambled up the smooth, golden wall up to the small, circular opening with a dexterity and speed quite remarkable for a girl of eight. With one last look over her shoulder, she ducked into the wall and with a kick of her tattered shoes, disappeared.

You walked around the jamb on the corner and peered into the vent, but the girl was out of sight. A little saddened but satisfied, you stepped back out into the main hall, sweeping your headlight from side to side.

And that was when you saw why the girl was there.

Seated against the wall, shining brightly, it seemed, against the torn and peeling wallpaper, was a small red wagon, the kind children pull behind themselves as they race down the sidewalk. Compared to everything else you had seen in this place, the wagon seemed clean and new, and it was loaded with an assortment of color and strange objects. You stepped forward and kneeled in front of it, and you saw that it was actually full of drawings, cute little scribbles of paper and crayon. Most of the drawings, you saw, seemed to be of you. They weren't very good, but they were definitely you. A tall man in a diving suit, a drill on one arm, standing in a field of flowers, holding hands with little girls, punching the faces of "bad men" (conveniently labeled for you) with zigzagged flashes of red crayon. The few drawings that weren't of you all depicted little girls, all smiling, some holding dolls or what you guessed were needles in their hands, all reaching out to you. You looked above the wagon, to the wall behind, and written out in huge letters in crayon were the words "COME AND FIND ME DADDY!" scratched into the rotting wallpaper. That feeling of longing rose up in your throat again, and you slowly flipped through every drawing, feeling as though you had uncovered some beautiful secret treasure that was meant only for you.

But there was more than paper and wax in that wagon.

Looking closely, you found folded dollar bills, bound together with tape, lying underneath the white paper. You picked them all up and thumbed through them, twenty dollars in all. You pocketed them quietly and made a mental note to be careful with them. Then, you saw several more foodstuffs, all of them fresh, cream cakes, chips, even a sandwich in a wrapper. Remembering Atlas's words of "take it with you," you pocketed those, two.

The last two items were quite different.

The first was a rather large syringe, just the small enough to fit into your hand, bearing four rounded corners. A large sticker of an apple was plastered on one side. It was completely empty. You held it up to the light and looked at it from different angles, trying to determine its purpose. You couldn't figure it out, but it had come from the wagon, so you pocketed that, too.

Then there was the last item. Honestly, you had seen it right away, but it had looked so large and unwieldy that hadn't known what to make of it, so you saved it for last.

The impression you'd had of it from your first distracted glance was of a huge silver tube of some kind, lying sideways amidst all the scribbled papers. You now brushed those aside and uncovered the contraption lying underneath, a massive, complex… something. You couldn't make heads or tails of it, honestly. It was made of tarnished metal, and seemed to have several handles carved out at various spaces on top that could serve as handles, including on with a crossed grip like the sort inside your drill. On top of the thing was a large rotating axle of some sort with a level attached to the side. From a large bulky center, it narrowed out in both ends, with various arrangements sticking out of the top and bottom of both sides like geometric puzzles.

Puzzled, and yet feeling as though it were important somehow, you reached over, gripped it by its rough handle, and hoisted it into your arms. It felt heavy, yet it fell easily in your arms, and your hands automatically moved to the set places spaced a foot or two apart and positioned themselves there with the ease and swiftness of muscle memory.

And that's when you realized: Oh, it's a gun.

A very _big_ gun. Your eyes widened as you comprehended the magnificent treasure you had just found. And you knew exactly how to hold it, too. You peered down the scope, keeping both your eyes open, looking at the little crosshair that marked the point where the mark would hit. You shook it slightly in your arms, wondering what sort of ammo it took. On the bulky center of the gun, you perceived a small latch, you pushed it down with your thumb, and it popped open, revealing a large cylinder with glowing yellow stripes running down its sides. You shook that in your ear like a rattle, and held it up at different angles in front of your eyes. You didn't see any sort of way to open it. You popped it back into its casing, and, once you were sure it was securely closed, you held the gun up against your shoulder and, just out of idle curiosity, fired.

The recoil would have blown a normal man off their feet, but you bore it with only a small jerk of the shoulder. With a bang of compressed energy and a whizz of scalded air, the shot flew from the end of the muzzle and embedded itself into the opposite wall.

"What was that?" Atlas asked suddenly, hearing the shot.

You walked over to the wall and inspected the mark, to see what you had done. Embedded deeply in the wall was a silver rivet, its head about the size of the pad of your thumb. Only the rounded top was visible inside the broken crater you had made; the rest of the rivet was buried deep in wall's surface. You put your fingers around it and tried to pull it out. No luck, it was buried in too deep. Grinning slightly, you turned back to the wagon and saw several more glowing cylinders, all of them full of rivets. You popped open the center of the gun and popped them all in. With a smile, you saw that they all fit.

It was when that was done that Atlas rang in again.

"Delta, listen to me," he said, "I didn't want to alarm you, but I've been looking at the camera feeds, and I'm pretty sure there's a Splicer headed your way."

At that precise moment, as if on cue, you heard a distant crash sounding down the hall, the hollowed, echoing sound of metal tumbling to the ground.

Atlas heard it, too. "She's in the kitchen," he said.

The kitchen! Why hadn't you thought to check there? Instantly, you swung the gun over your back and attached before picking up and securing your drill. Then, without a backward look, you ran down the hall in the direction that the sound had come.

While you were running, perhaps you noticed or perhaps not, the small buzzing and flashing coming from the front of the building, from the door in which you'd come. But you either ignored or didn't notice it and kept going, not pausing or slowing down for an instant.

At some distance down the hall, you passed a camera, which whirred to life and followed you with its beam as you ran by. "Wait, wait, wait a second," said Atlas, noticing the bulky mass you were carrying on your back. "What have you got there?"

You didn't answer because at that moment, you saw a door quite unlike the others, a door with a small, round window and no handle, swinging freely on its open hinges. You skidded to a halt in front of this door and, slowly, your drill at the ready, pushed your way in.

The spotlight on your helmet swept into the room, falling upon the interior of the kitchen with a faint, white glow. The kitchen was standard and small, with a plain, utilitarian arrangement of tiles and linoleum. The countertops were filthy, covered with filthy and hideous stains around which flies were buzzing. In the middle of the shrunken space was an island, a large counter detached from everything else. Scattered over the top were more pots and, as you watched, a white nurse's cap, which bobbed in and out of view.

You waited for a moment, your drill at the ready, listening. She appeared to be rummaging through something; the cap, masking a thick wad of knotted, dirty hair, ducked in and out of view, and you could hear more metal clattering onto the floor. You became aware of a frenzied muttering that you hadn't noticed when you were out in the hall, a stream of incomprehensible babble that the woman was hissing as if her life depended on it.

"_Never enough, never enough, no, never enough. There's never – There's never enough. All the open mouths, all the demanding, whining, I can't do it! I can't do this! Charles, Charles, can't you see I'm trying my best? Can't you see, can't you see…?"_

You took another step forward, cautiously, waiting for her to make the first move. Suddenly, the cap bobbed up one more time and knocked rather painfully against the handle of a pot sitting on the island. It spun and clattered loudly to the floor. The woman let out a sharp hiss through her teeth and popped her head up over the surface of the counter.

Once again, you had to swallow back a glob of bile that rose up your throat. The woman's head, staring up at you, seemed to be an abomination. The skin on her face had the look of an overcooked bubbling stew; strange welts rose and oozed all over her face, tracing a path of scars like a cluster of death. Her teeth, which showed through the split gap of her open mouth, were black, and a thick ooze stuck between them, cementing them together. Like the melting man you had seen before, her eyes seemed to open just a little too wide, and as she stared blankly into the beam from your spotlight, you could clearly see the pupil of one eye contract, while the other stayed wide; the woman had severe brain damage.

She stared for a while, into the light, frozen, before letting out a tortured sound. It wasn't really a shout; it was just… a sound. Like she was just drawing out the syllable "Aaaaaahhh…" between the phlegm in her teeth. Then she rose to her feet, and you got a good view of the rest of her. She was wearing the tattered remains of what must have been a nurse's uniform, the white color long replaced by plotches of ugly brown, yellow, and green. A particularly vibrant stain was splashed upon the front of her dress in a spotted line just under her chin. As she stared at you, her hideous face changing from a look of bewilderment to one of absolute fury, she let out a horrendous, hacking cough, and a stream of blood and pus flew out of her throat and dripped down her chin. Well, now you knew where the stain came from.

Now that she had seen you, her face was scrunched up in a grimace of absolute hatred. She swept one arm across the counter and knocked the pots lying atop it flying. You saw, with a note of bewilderment that she was carrying two silver hooks, one in each hand. What did she mean to do with those?

"_QUIET HOURS!"_ she screeched, and more slime flew out of her mouth with every word. _"THE RESIDENTS ARE TRYING TO NAP! GET OUT!"_

Before you could point out to her that_ she_ was the one making all the racket, she seized a glass bottle from the counter behind her and hurled it as hard as she could at her head. You ducked with a speed and precision that surprised even you. The bottle sailed over you head and exploded in a shower of glass on the doorframe behind you. Having received all the provocation you needed, you revved up your drill, filling the air with the diesel and smoke, and swung it as hard as you could at her. But, with a dexterity of an acrobat, she jumped clear out of the reach of your drill.

And landed on the ceiling.

You stared up at her, flabbergasted. She had jumped up and somehow landed on her hands and feet against the ceiling. She scuttled over the ceiling, crab-style, rapidly crawling upside down toward the corner where you were. You gritted your teeth and darted to the side, out of the way. You swung your drill up at her again as she moved, but she was too high and too fast, and the point of the drill burrowed into the low ceiling a few inches above your head. You both continued moving in opposite direction, before you both came to a halt, you behind the counter and she in the corner of the ceiling.

So now, your positions were reversed, and it was you who were crouching behind the island and her who was beside the door to the hallway.

You scowled in frustration; you could not reach her with the drill; that was obvious. She, for her part, was still glaring at you, upside down, as though you were the source of madness in the world. With deliberate, animal slowness, she opened her mouth and gave out a sound that was like… a roar? A hiss? A scream? It wasn't a human sound, at any rate. The ooze between her jaws grew taught and rattled in her throat, and her tongue curled out, over her chin, up towards the ceiling. And as this animal sound escaped her throat, as you watched, more and more horrified, the thousands of welts on her face opened up like a thousand dark eyes, a thousand dark caverns, and a flurry of bees streamed out of the warrens in her face.

You didn't move. You couldn't. You felt one of your eyes twitching. _Bees?_ What the _hell?_ It couldn't be true. It was too surreal, too freakish. But soon the bees were upon, buzzing and humming in all their insect fury, filling the air with the whir of their wings, bouncing and clattering against the window of your helmet, trying to pierce through your armor. They could not, of course, but they were everywhere, blocking your vision, stuffing your ears with the drone from their wings. You clenched your teeth in fury and waved your arms in the air, trying to push the curtain of bees aside. But of course, it was no use. The woman in the corner had ceased her silent, animal scream and was now chucking something at you, shrieking as she did so. One of these things scraped against your arm, and, without cutting your armor, sliced a line of blood across the skin. You winced, and your fury grew.

Meanwhile, Atlas was screaming in your ear: "Delta! Are you alright? It sounds like she's using the Bee Plasmid!"

Bee Plasmid? What? Why would anyone make such a horrible thing?

"Delta!" Atlas shouted again. "I can help you! See if you can lure her outside, in front of the security camera! Get her out there!"

You nodded, clenching your lip in your teeth. With a speed and precision that can only come from months of training and practice, you swapped out your drill for the gun on your back and, squinting through the haze of bees, fired.

The first shot was a direct hit and pierced her in the chest, right beneath the collarbone. You fired again and again, and the shots continued to pierce her in bursts of red, her arm, her face, her eye.

"_NO!"_ she screamed. _"NO! NO! NO!"_ And she continued to throw her weapons at you, which you now realized were the hooks on her hands. But remembering Atlas's instructions, you continued firing, occasionally swinging the butt of the gun at her, meaning to herd her out into the hall, and soon enough, she scuttled out of the room, still screeching, and dropped to the carpet outside. Quickly, you ran after her into the hall.

Somehow, she had landed perfectly on her ankles. She was crouched over, glaring at you through her one good eye, before turning and vaulting some distance away from you with a series of rapid cartwheels. Heels, head, heels, head, spinning like the spoke of a wheel. You watched, mesmerized. But that was what she intended. With a shriek, she suddenly propelled herself forward, holding one hook over her head, intending to jam it into your head. But you were ready. Without hesitating, you raised your gun to your eye and fired, nailing her right in the head. She flew backward, skidding against the carpet, and you ran up to her, still firing in her direction. Soon, she got up and lunged at you again, and you felt a low twinge of irritation. Just how much would it take to bring this woman down?

Again and again this dance repeated itself, you firing, her lunging, until at last, you were beside the camera. The red light winked on and swept over to where she was, spinning and twirling with a kind of terrible grace. And as soon as the light fell on her, you ran into view, brandishing your new weapon.

"What? But that's…" said Atlas, a tone of awe growing in his voice. "That's a rivet gun! Blimey, Delta! Where'd you get that?" And you detected a slight trace of envy.

"Ah, never mind," he said dismissively. "Who cares where you got it? Anyway, watch this!" And in your radio, you heard a small click, like that of a button being pressed.

For a short moment, tiny as the point of a pen, it seemed as though nothing was happening. Then, from down the hall, came a strange sound of whistling. From the opposite direction from which you'd come, a series of yellow lights appeared, spinning in midair. They flew into the light from the camera and your helmet, and you saw, to your surprise, what looked like a small helicopter, its blades spinning of its head with a buzzing whir that put you in mind of the bees. As you looked, you saw two long tubes protruding from the base of the machine, whatever it was.

You had no clue what it was, but the Splicer evidently knew because she immediately turned her back on you and hissed at it with her animal fury. She began chucking hooks at it, having, apparently, completely forgotten about you.

And suddenly, once the machine had flown up close enough to the Splicer, something small clicked inside it, and with a flash, a hail of bullets flew out of its nozzle. Not rivets, like you were using, but honest-to-God bullets, which pierced the air and the body of the Splicer.

"Yeah!" shouted Atlas, triumphantly. "How do you like that ya caffler!"

She flung her arms out, the way you had when faced with the bees, and flailed about her face them as though she were on fire. But, of course, it did no good, and she soon turned tail and, to your astonishment, fled, running as fast as she could the way you had come. Down the hall, you could hear her shrieking in anguish: _"Blood! Blood! Oh God! Oh God, no!"_

You stood still a moment, tense, waiting for her to come back. But soon, you heard her voice disappear. The building became quiet again.

"Whew!" Atlas exhaled a breath he had apparently been holding. "You okay, boyo?" He laughed. "Not so useless now, am I?"

You looked to the camera and shot a thumbs up.

"Brilliant," said Atlas. He sounded out of breath. "Christ, that was rough. Where did you get that rivet gun? Saved your life, that did."

You looked down at it, remembering the wagon. _Come find me, Daddy._ You smiled down at it, with a smile that would have broken my heart.

"Right," said Atlas. "Right. I've had all I can stand of this place. Let's get you out of here."

You nodded and turned around, heading back in the direction of the vending machine. Your intent was to go back the way you came, stroll out the front door, and leave this nightmarish place behind without a second glance.

But, alas, there was one more surprise waiting for you.

You had reached the vending machine and were starting down the hallway to the main foyer when, far away, you heard a distant child's voice. You stopped and listened, hard, and detected the notes of a song, disjointed, random, and yet oddly haunting and beautiful. It wasn't the same girl you had seen before, you were sure of that. Without really knowing why, you began to wander in the direction of the voice. Something about it held you spellbound, like a siren's song.

Right when you got close enough to make out the words to the song (in which you caught the word, "angel"), the girl paused in her melody and said, loud enough for you to hear:

"Hurry up, Mr. B! Don't make me carry you!"

You stopped dead in your tracks. Mr. _B?_ Was it… Was it possible? In a burst, you suddenly broke into a run, sprinting down the hall to the source of the voice. If he was here… If _that man_ was here… Oh! You'd show him!

You could see a faint light in the room ahead. You rounded the corner, into the room where the girl was, and as soon as you did, you immediately spun on your heel and darted back the way you came. You twisted around and pressed your back flat against the wall before the doorway, panting heavily. After a few seconds, you dared another look into the room, leaning over your shoulder to peak inside.

There was a little girl there; it was true. But next to her… Next to her was not who you thought it would be at all.

Next to her was another Big Daddy.

You stared, fascinated. There was no mistaking it. Though this one looked nothing like you. It was bigger than you for one thing, bulkier. It seemed to gave the proportions and stance of an ape, not a real ape, mind, out in the wild. More like an old movie's idea of an ape, hunched back, burly, grasping arms, a head sat upon no neck at all. It seemed widened, stretched out at the sides. Its helmet was huge, perfectly round, with a series of yellow lights dotting its surface. Everything about it seemed to scream power and alien strength. You were confident it could pound you into hamburger meat in ten seconds flat. And yet, there was no mistaking that it was the same thing you were. There was the way it docilely followed the little girl, for one thing. And, swinging by its side, you saw a huge drill, sharp and glinting.

You watched, fascinated, this pair of monster and child, the former shuffling hugely, the latter skipping and singing.

You then observed the little girl and felt another hiss of disappointment to a hope you hadn't known you had. No. This girl wasn't right either. You studied her for a moment, holding your breath. She was very pretty, despite her grime and knotted hair. Her hair was dark and long, hanging down almost past her waist, and she let it flow freely over her back and shoulders. She was wearing a pink dress, across which there were a few stains. There was a pink ribbon in her hair. In her right hand, she was swinging a long, thin needle, about the length of her forearm. This she swung in time with her skips and jerked along with the notes to her song.

Looking around, you noticed a body, decomposing on the floor. You were too far and it was too dark for you to tell what it was, whether man or woman, young or old. The little girl soon noticed it, too because she pointed at it and turned to the Big Daddy, grinning.

"Look, Mr. Bubbles," she said to it, "It's an _angel."_ An ironic smirk formed around her mouth as she said this last word, as though she were smiling at some private joke. "Or maybe it's a dead guy," she jeered. "Time for me to work."

The Big Daddy (You quickly realized a better term would be "her."_ Her_ Big Daddy.), uttered a deep, moaning sound, a groan like a whale or some other ancient animal, a cry full of mystery and ancient power.

"Oh, _no,"_ Atlas groaned. "I'd know that sound anywhere."

The girl, the Little Sister, dropped to her knees in front of the body, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear. Then, with a grit of her teeth, she plunged the needle into the neck of the corpse. It entered the flesh with a wet, papery sound. She then pulled it out and stuck it in again, maneuvering it back and forth in the corpse's flesh. You winced, watching her.

Suddenly, she looked up from her task in your direction. Her eyes widened as she took you, and she immediately jumped to her feet and pointed at you. "I don't like him!" she shouted, glaring at you. Her Big Daddy's response was immediate and frightening. It let out a terrifying snarl and stomped down one iron boot in front of her, the tip of its drill spinning. You felt your heart plunge down into your stomach.

Atlas must have heard the imminent danger. "Back off, boyo," he whispered anxiously. "Back off!"

Quickly, you raised both your hands over your head, the gun suspended above you in such a way that you couldn't possibly fire it. Slowly, deliberately, you backed up, taking one step back at a time, showing your cowardice.

The girl glared at you as you retreated then suddenly smirked. "He doesn't want to fight you, Mr. B," she said slyly. "He's too much of a chicken."

"Hey," said Atlas to you, "Better to be a chicken than dead." You heartily nodded your agreement.

The girl soon dropped back to her knees a recommenced her task. You noticed, as you continued to step back, a small red vial at the base of the needle, which was slowly filling with red liquid as she stuck it in. The Big Daddy, meanwhile, had continued to glare after you, its drill spinning, before abruptly turning away from you and back to the girl, apparently deciding that you weren't a threat.

"By the way, Delta," said Atlas quietly. "You notice anything odd about that particular Big Daddy?"

What? Did he mean besides the fact that he was considerably bigger and tougher than you? Actually... Now that you thought about it… There was something subtly off about the other Protector's movements. The way it acted, the way it stood over the girl. What was it?

"Well," said Atlas, chuckling, "Interesting story, Delta. I think you'll like this. See, you're unique among Big Daddies because-"

But suddenly he stopped, and with a feeling of cold dread, you realized why. You heard a soft but unmistakable clinking sound: the sound of a hook against a ceiling. And before you could do anything, before you could take another step, you saw her, the Splicer, the exact same one you had encountered just moments before. She was on the other side of the room, looking down from her perch at the pair below. Neither the Little Sister nor her Big Daddy had seen her.

Frozen to the spot with dread, you saw the Splicer, who somehow seemed to no longer be injured in the slightest, cock her head to the side as she observed the girl. She then crept over and dropped onto the floor beside the pair, right as the girl was rising to her feet, the vial at the end of her needle full.

With a jolt, you realized what the Splicer wanted with the Little Sister. _"There are some greedy people who simply can't wait for their ADAM and will try to hurt the diligent Little Sisters to get it before everyone else." _

"_Make me well,"_ the Splicer was saying, _"Make the pain go away… Make me well!" _And she lunged towards the Little Sister.

The Little Sister, startled, gave out an earsplitting scream, and the Big Daddy roared in fury. The Splicer jumped back, regarding the monster with some hesitation, before shrieking again and opening the welts on her skin like flowers. The swarm of bees poured forth, swirling around the pair, stinging the girl, whirling around the Big Daddy. The Splicer struck the girl across the face, knocking her backwards.

"Mr. Bubbles!" she shrieked, "Help me!"

And with those words, as though she'd flipped a switch, the yellow lights dotting the surface of the Big Daddy's helmet turned to a lurid blood-red. It let out a roar so full of wrath that you felt a cold sweat break all over your body.

"Run Delta!" Atlas screamed. _"Run!"_

You turned on your heel and bolted with all your might, without looking back. If you had cared to listen to the sounds behind you, perhaps you might have heard the Splicer's anguished screams or the sounds of wet organic matter being crunched and ripped apart, _rip,_ or the roaring fury of the Big Daddy, or perhaps the voice of the little girl shrieking, "KILL HER! KILL HER!" with all her might. But you heard none of that. You were running for you life.

Eventually, you came to another corner that turned into a hallway with a drawer. Not knowing what else to do. You ducked into the hall and dived behind the drawer, curling yourself up as small and as low as you could.

You listened, shivering, clutching your knees to your chest, to the crashes and bangs and screams and roars coming from down the hall. Every cell of your body felt like it was screaming. You thought you would melt into a puddle right there on the floor.

And then, suddenly, with a resounding crashing, the Splicer's body flew down the hall, passing by the corridor where you now sat crouching. She was quite rigid as she flipped head over heels, heels over head, and as you watched, the top half of her torso separated midair from the bottom half, and chest and legs went spinning down the hall on separate paths. The Big Daddy had sawed her body right in half.

And then, there was the Big Daddy himself, careening down the hall at a breakneck speed and stopping, to your horror, right in front of the doorway where you were, the red lights from its helmet shining over the walls, the floor, the drawer behind which you hid… It spun around again and again on its feet, searching in every direction, and you felt the cold shivers in your skin double, feeling that you were about to die at any second.

But then the Little Sister came running up to her protector's side, looking quite satisfied. She tugged on his hand, still held rigid by his side, and smiled up at him. You noticed that despite her earlier injuries, her skin now looked quite smooth and unblemished.

"It's alright, you got her, Mr. B!" she was saying, "You ripped her apart! I'm okay now!"

And only then did her Big Daddy calm itself, the lights on its helmet flicking abruptly back to yellow. Its entire posture changed, and it seemed to loosen. The girl laughed as her Big Daddy gently wrapped its massive hand around hers.

"Now," said Atlas, "Do you see why you're different from them? Look at him. He has no will of his own. No memories. No thoughts. He doesn't even know that he used to be a man. His entire narrow world revolves completely around her. He's nothing more than a slave to her. And that's what makes you different, boyo. That what sets the Alpha Series apart. You can think. They can't."

You stared at them, you heart still hammering forcefully in your chest. The girl tugged impatiently on her Big Daddy's arm. "Pick me up, Mr. B," she commanded. "Carry me." And he did so, scooping down and gathering her up with one hand. He placed her on his shoulder, and she secured herself there on his back, gripping the back of his shoulder with one hand. "Well, come on Delta," said Atlas, "We'd best get a move on," But you couldn't move, not yet. You could only stare, transfixed, at the pair of them as they lumbered away. Beast and Beauty. Monster and child. Inexplicably together, the products of a city gone mad.

* * *

**AN:**

_Told you._

_In case anyone wants to know, the two Little Sisters who appeared in this chapter are Becky and Jessica Lovejoy, respectively. _

_Don't get used to expecting a chapter every week. I'm spoiling you right now._

_Please review!_


	5. In and Out

**5. In and Out**

Even after the girl and her Big Daddy were long out of your sight, you dared not get up from the floor. You kept listening, long and hard, for any trace of the girl's whispered giggling or the stomp of the monster's boots. And even after straining your ears would still bring no sound, even then you felt you couldn't move.

Atlas tried to cajole you. "C'mon, boyo, up and at 'em," he said, "You can't sit there forever." And you knew he was right, but even so…

At last, you rose shakily to your feet and walked out into the hall, your posture tense, yours eyes nervously darting back and forth. Almost against your will, your eyes flicked down in the direction that you'd seen the pieces of the Splicer fly. With your limited head beam and the darkness, you couldn't see anything, but you knew she was there, lying somewhere in the shadows, torn in two…

You shuddered and, in a sudden burst, broke into a mad sprint down the hall, not daring to look back, not daring to look anywhere, afraid somehow that if you looked, some danger, some other delay would spring into existence, leaping at you with hooks or drills or bees. You alternated between wishing that the lights were working and praying that your headlight would break, wanting to see everything and yet nothing.

Atlas was unsympathetic.

"Ugh, get a hold of yourself, will you Delta?" he said, sounding impatient. "I told you it would be dangerous. Everybody who is still alive here has had to get used to living like this. We don't have time for cowardice."

You knew. You _knew_ that. You cringed in shame but felt another wave of defensiveness come over you. You couldn't help being scared. You thought of me, and even though you didn't know my face anymore, I brought you comfort. Just a little.

At last, you passed some doors with some familiar-looking names on them. Grinning a little with weak relief, you quickly ran down the hall, rounded the corner…

And froze, your left foot swinging dangerously in the air.

Standing in front of the door to the outside, a little way behind the desk in the foyer, was her Big Daddy, the very same one you had seen just moments ago. At least, you were pretty sure it was the same one. You could see, though you were a few yards away, that one of the lights on his helmet was dented, damaged, no doubt, by the Splicer's hooks. The girl, however, was not with him. You put your foot down and quickly looked around, but she definitely wasn't there. It was just the two of you in the room now.

As you watched, the Big Daddy lifted his giant hand and twisted the knob on the front door. He twisted it once then took a step back. There was a muted groaning and sloshing sound from outside, before a bright caged light that you hadn't noticed before switched on to green. The Big Daddy then twisted the knob again. This time it swung open, and he stepped into the flood chamber, swinging the door closed behind him.

You grinned. So that's it was done. Eagerly, you trotted over to the door, bouncing a little on the spot when you got there, waiting for the other Big Daddy to step through. As soon as the light above flicked off, you reached forward and twisted the knob once, just as you'd seen him do. Then you stepped into the flood chamber, closing the door behind you, and went out.

After the gloom of the apartment complex, the lurid blue glow of the ocean was like a light from heaven. You smiled a little at it, before taking a look around. The Big Daddy was out here, of course, but he hadn't gotten very far. Other Big Daddies, you noticed, didn't ever seem to be in much of a hurry.

Shrugging, you looked out towards the city again, squinting for the two red lights you had seen before. There they were, not looking any closer since you saw them last. The majority of the city lay several yards beneath you, at the bottom of a trench. Curious, you walked up to the edge of the cliff and looked straight down.

What greeted your eyes was a massive field of jagged rocks, all black and unforgiving. You cringed and looked around for some sort of staircase or something, but there didn't seem to be a path down. You scratched the side of your helmet. Now what?

Hearing a distant groan, you looked up and saw the Big Daddy slowly lumbering toward the edge of the cliff, toward the city. You watched him, looking for more help, and saw him reach the edge and then stop.

He looked down towards the rocks spread out on the slope beneath him, seemingly considering something. Then, before your eyes, he swung his arm and his drill by his sides and leapt up into the water. He rose much higher than you thought he would, making a narrow arc against the blue, before landing with a resounding boom on the slope below. You leaned over the side of the cliff and saw that he was crouching on a rock large enough to support him, his drill propped up in its surface. He jumped up again in the same way and landed again a little farther down.

You felt your heart beating a little faster as you looked back down at the path in front of you. Well… If he could do it, so could you. After all, you were Alpha Series. He couldn't even think, right? Pursing your lips and blowing out a stream of air, you clapped your hands together, a somewhat difficult feat underwater, rubbed them against each other, picked out a rock that you figured looked good enough, swung your arms and leapt.

You were a little out of practice, and didn't get quite as high as the other Big Daddy, but you still gained quite a bit of depth, lifting through the water as the ground fell away from you. Gritting your teeth, you spread out your arms and legs a little to slow your fall and landed, shakily, on a rock pretty close to the one you'd been aiming for. You opened the eyes you didn't know you'd been squinting and looked around again. With just one leap, you were already a third of the way down the slope. You smiled, a little smug, then, unthinkingly, you put down your foot.

And promptly stepped off the rock and tumbled down the cliff.

After a few blurred seconds of bouncing and slamming against rocks, you landed, in a dazed heap, at the bottom, facedown, a little bruised but otherwise no worse for wear.

"What happened?" asked Atlas. "Are you okay?"

Slowly, you rolled over to your side and knocked once against the radio. You heard Atlas let out a breath.

"Well… Alright," he said, apparently willing to let it go. "Are you at the city?"

You rolled back onto your front, clearing the stars from your eyes, and looked up. The large billowing walls of the city were right in front of you. You could see through the plastic to the streets and buildings beyond. You grinned, a little pleased with yourself for coming this far. But how to get in?

You heard a high-pitched whirring echoing through the water a little to your right. You looked and saw the Big Daddy crouching at the base of the wall, drilling at something near the ground that you couldn't see. Satisfied that he would be occupied for a while, you rose to your feet and looked for a way in. You quickly found it: a large metal door, taller than you, with a lever next to it. You walked up to it and pulled the lever, and with a loud creaking from the door and a satisfied "Ah!" from Atlas, it slid open into the flood chamber. As you stepped in, the door slammed shut behind you, sealing you in.

"Alright, here we are," said Atlas. "No turning back."

As if there ever was. Without hesitating any more, you switched the lever on the wall from "FLOOD" to "DRAIN." The water swirled to your feet, the light switched green, and the opposite door slid open into Springfield.

You stepped out into a large courtyard of some sort. The pavement was cobbled with soft white stone that had probably once been very nice, but now looked chipped and green. Directly in front of you was stood a large fountain from which the ugliest merman you had ever seen (you thought) was blowing a stream of foamy water, from which a living creature occasionally slipped. Above your head, you could see the blue rippling ceiling, which, through some trick of reflection, made the filtered sunlight brighter inside than it was out. From a crackling speaker somewhere, soft swing dance music was playing, and it echoed weirdly in the open space.

Ahead of you, behind the fountain, was another large sign, even bigger than the one you had seen outside. On this was written, "WELCOME, _Early Risers,_ TO SPRINGFIELD," in a strange mix of cursive and bold.

Over this sign, some had taken the liberty to add their own words. Two lines of graffiti had been sprayed over it, obviously done by two different hands. One read, "ZOMBIES" in a crude shade of green and a sloppy hand. The other, placed in the corner in red, read "EL BARTO."

You heard a whirring behind you and turned to see a security camera, mounted on a pillar on the wall. It came to life and turned toward you. You waved at it.

"Okay, boyo," said Atlas. "Let's see now… Go to your right, I think. That should put you in the residential area."

You set off.

"Your other right, boyo," said Atlas.

You set off in the other direction. You couldn't help but look up at the fountain as you did so. It towered several feet above your head, and against the sunlight streaming through the sunroof, it struck a vaguely imposing figure. You scowled at it, fingering your rivet gun, and were about to turn to go, when you noticed something very troubling sticking out of the statue.

You stared, feeling your eye twitch slightly, and walked up to the fountain. Sticking directly out of the merman's ass was a… it looked like a spear of some sort. It was about the length of your forearm, made of black metal, and seemed embedded deeply in the stone. You reached up and twisted it, and it slid out into your hands with minimal effort. You turned it over and over, examining it. It was even longer than you thought, with a razor sharp point at one end and a series of fins at the other. Not knowing what to make of it but not really wanting to leave it in such an unfortunate place, you kept it and walked on.

You kept going in your original direction, jogged past the huge sign, and found another courtyard just beyond. There seemed to be a sort of welcoming desk up ahead, but it was covered in dark stains, and nobody seemed to be manning it. You kept to your right, as instructed, and ran past more ads and a series of dying and overgrown topiaries, large, perhaps once appealing bushes in the shapes of elephants, giraffes, dinosaurs. You didn't care to stop and gawk; you ran past them all.

And it was when you were almost to the way out that you heard voices.

You skidded on your heels and slowed to a creep, gripping the handle of your rivet gun. It sounded like two men; Splicers, you guessed, from the manic tones of their voices, which echoed eerily off the clear gleaming walls. As you crept closer, you listened.

They seemed to be moving, their voices coming ever closer. One of them let out a hard mocking laugh. His voice sounded thick, as though something were pressing on his throat. _"Heh! You think Old Man Burns liked the present I gave 'im?"_ he said. Then he gave out another barking laugh, which quickly descended into a harsh flurry of coughing.

"_Christ! Again?" _the other growled._ "Why do you keep doin' stuff like that, you weird fuck?"_

"_Aw, c'mon, Mikey!" _the first one sniggered._ "Can't you take a joke?"_

"_I'm gonna take your teeth outta your head if you keep wastin' our ammo like that!" _the other snapped hoarsely._ "I ought 'ta cut you up and feed you to the sharks!" _

The other Splicer didn't seem to think this was much of a threat, as he simply burst into another cacophony of harsh laughter. From where you were, you heard a splatter of something wet hit the ground.

"_Hey,"_ said the first one, suddenly. _"Look at this bastard."_

You started and glanced rapidly around, thinking they had seen you. But you couldn't see them, and their voices still sounded somewhat far away. The Splicers seemed to have stopped. The other one whistled through his teeth.

"_Yeesh," _you heard him say._ "He's all torn up. Like wax paper!"_

The first one giggled. _"Looks like that toad I hit with my car once. See if he's got anything pretty on 'im."_ You heard a "thunk," then the sound of something rustling. A light clinking and jingling sound filled the air.

"_Never mind the cash,"_ the other said. _"Open 'im wider! I want some of that ADAM!"_ There was a small pause, then: _"What do you suppose happened to 'im?"_

The first one sniggered again. _"Maybe the Puppet-Man got 'im,"_ he said. Something about his tone of voice seemed sly, as though he were making some private joke.

The other snorted, apparently in on the joke._ "Yeah, right!" _he scoffed._ "Nobody'd look this pretty after runnin' into the Puppet-Man!"_

Atlas seemed just as confused as you were. "The _what?" _he asked blankly. The Splicers, of course, didn't respond.

There was a dry and browning tree just in front of you, blocking your view. You could see the outlines of shapes moving just beyond, two misshapen shadows and a third something lying between them. You moved your tongue across your bottom lip, gripped your rivet gun in hand, and pushed past the branches into the clearing.

And there they were, right in front of you.

They were blocking your way, one on the right and one on the left. They were both grown men, though how old they were, it was impossible to tell. The one on the left was standing upright, looking down at his companion. The other was crouching on his knees, his hands in the jacket of an eviscerated corpse lying on the ground between them. As soon as you had stepped forward, they both stopped what they were doing and looked up at you, their eyes wide, their faces blank. They both looked awful, of course, but not in any way that particularly stood out. They were covered in the usual welts and scars, their lips pulled back, their eyes bloodshot. Their clothes were in tatters and had perhaps once been quite nice, business suits and ties and all that, but were now torn and filthy. They were both carrying guns. The one on the left had a revolver, while the one on the right held a longer weapon that you couldn't name.

The three of you stared at each other for no longer than half a second before they both snapped to attention. "Metal Daddy!" one of them shouted, you couldn't tell which one, "We're gonna drink tonight!" and they both raised their weapons. You raised yours, too, but somehow, the Splicer on the right was faster. From where he was crouching on the ground, he was able to whip out his weapon and, with a heavy clank, fired before you could even think to pull your trigger. You ducked to your left and saw, for a split-second as you turned, a_ spear_ hurtling through the air just inches from your face.

"Damn it!" the other shouted. "Why don't you fucking aim, for God's sakes?"

"Wait a minute!" shouted the crouching one hoarsely. His face assumed a look of puzzlement before breaking into a wide, wicked grin. "He ain't got no brat with 'im!"

"What's that?" the other asked, lowering his gun, too. "No brat?"

He looked, and his looking seemed to confirm it. He pointed his gun down towards the ground and looked at you, up and down, before bursting into laughter. "Well, fuck me!" he said. "A Big Daddy walkin' solo! No use wastin' lead on a… on an empty glass!"

The one on the ground rose to his feet, still smirking. "I ain't getting killed over something as useless as that!" he said, flashing you a deranged and wicked eye.

You stared at them both, feeling somehow humiliated. The thought occurred to you in your burning brain: They thought you were dumb. They looked at you like they might look at a moving post. You bit your lip and lowered your own gun.

"Let's go!" the one on the left said, gesturing with his gun. "Leave the stiff. There are other fish in the sea." And he laughed at his own cleverness.

"You got lucky, Tin Daddy!" the other jeered at you as he ran after him. They both took off in the direction you had come and out of sight.

You stood there for a second before starting off again, slower this time. Atlas rang in again. "What? What happened?" he asked. "Did you get them?"

You pounded your fist twice against the radio.

"No?" repeated Atlas incredulously. "Well, where are they?"

You didn't know. Off sticking more spears in the fountain you guessed. You kept walking.

"Don't tell me…" Atlas said slowly, anger building in his voice. "Don't tell me they ran off!"

Tap.

"And you_ let_ them?" he shouted, his tone disbelieving. "Delta, that was incredibly stupid! What if they come back?"

You shrugged. You didn't care. All you really knew was that you didn't want to fight someone that didn't want to fight you. There was no point.

"Delta," said Atlas. "Need I remind you that you were _dead _yesterday?"

You stopped.

"Just think," Atlas insisted. "You don't remember how you died, and I sure don't know how it happened! What if this kind of attitude is what got you killed in the first place?"

You stood for a moment before quickly shaking your head. No. No. That didn't matter. This place was bad enough. You wouldn't make it worse unless you had to. You reached up and tapped twice against your radio. In your ear, you heard a small sound escape Atlas's throat.

"You… fool…" he hissed.

But he didn't say anything more.

You didn't run into anybody else after that. Somehow, the inside of the city seemed just as deserted as the water outside. Atlas, it seemed, was giving you the silent treatment, and only the rattling of your boots and your rivet gun kept you company.

After you had walked a little ways, you came to what looked like a low tunnel. The arching walls were made of glass, like in an aquarium, offering you a view of the ocean outside. You walked into it, again surrounded by blue. On either side, outside in the water, stood a multitude of signs advertising various products: Target Dummy, Gravity Well, Security Bullseye, Winter Blast, Booze Hound Tonic, Natural Camouflage Tonic, Armored Shell Tonic… You had no idea what any of these things were. A few signs seemed to advertise places: a school, a gym, some sort of orphanage. One that particularly caught your eye was of a man in a hard hat standing in front of a severe looking facility with a pair of odd, sloping towers in the background. The man was pulling up his sleeve and clenching his fist. A series of lightning bolts seemed to be jetting out of his gloved hand.

At last, you came to the end of the tunnel and to another clearing. But something seemed to be off about this area. I mean, more so than the last one. It seemed more cluttered than the other one. All around you stood chest high piles of furniture, machines, and torn-down signs, seemingly creating cover of some kind. And… what was that sound? You slowly stepped into the room, frowning. It seemed to be a mechanical whirring and ticking of some kind. Was it another security camera…? No. That wasn't it. Then what...?

Atlas heard it, too. "Wait," he said suddenly. "Delta, stop."

You froze, alarmed by his tone.

"Do you hear that?" he asked.

Of course you did. Tap.

"Alright…" said Atlas. "Alright, listen to me, Delta. Don't make any sudden moves. Is there a place where you can maybe take cover or something?"

Properly alarmed now, you tapped once and quickly glanced around. You didn't see anything that looked particularly lethal. Just more garbage. Your glance fell on what you guessed was the nearest pile, and you dove behind it, taking care to keep low to the ground. Luckily, it was just tall enough to cover you while you were on your hands and knees.

"Okay, are you properly hidden now?" Atlas asked.

Tap.

"Good," he said. He made a clicking sound with his tongue. When he spoke again, he sounded a little on edge. "Okay, Delta, don't move from that spot," he said. "I think there's a turret in the room."

A what? That didn't sound good at all…

"Stay calm," said Atlas. "I need you to see where it is, all right? Can you do that for me?"

You winced a little. Did you have to? But you tapped on your radio anyway.

"Good," said Atlas. "Okay, so without moving from that spot, I need you to see around wherever you're hiding and take a quick look around the room. What you'll be looking for is a sort of gun mounted on a chair. There should be a red light on top. Now, when you hear me say, 'Now,' I need you to get back behind your cover. Do not wait a second, do you understand me?"

Tap.

"Great," said Atlas. "Ready? Go!"

Biting your lip, you pushed up on your hands and raised yourself upwards, keeping your knees on the ground. Slowly, you pushed up until your eyes peeked just above the edge of the lamppost that had been thrown on top of the pile.

And there it was, directly in front of you, not more than seven feet away. It was just as Atlas described it, a long, menacing-looking gun barrel protruding from the top of a black, metal chair, facing to the right of you. Sitting in the seat and slightly to the side of the barrel was a large wooden crate. A mechanism underneath was whirring, the arm underneath spinning against a wheel mounted there. There was a flashlight mounted on front, which cast a spotlight in the direction the barrel was facing.

You only really got a half-second glance of it because as soon as you raised your head above your cover, the gun on top seem to perk up slightly, and the whole contraption slowly swiveled towards you until you were looking directly down its barrel. At that moment, you heard a click and a small clink, like a small bell was being rung.

"Now!" shouted Atlas.

Not wasting any time, you immediately ducked your head down, and as soon as you did, a barrage of rattling hail suddenly flew against the wall of junk, pattering against the metal and shattering glass. A few shots flew over your head in bright camera flashes of light, and you heard them skim the top edge of the pile and strike the blue wall behind you, falling, clattering, to the ground.

This went on for only a few seconds before the hail stopped and the gun resumed its quiet humming. Only a few seconds.

But it was enough.

"Are you alright?" asked Atlas as soon as it was over. "Were you hit?"

No. You weren't.

Atlas sighed. "Good," he said. "Did you see it?"

You nodded shakily and tapped once. Oh, you'd _seen_ it all right! You had stared into the face of the death!

"Better and better," said Atlas wryly. "Now, Delta, tell me this: Can you get past it?"

Well, that, now, you weren't sure about. The turret was awfully close by. But you decided to try it anyway. Being careful to stay below the top of the pile, you shifted yourself and turned around so that you were facing the right, towards the next closest wall…

And came face to face with a corpse.

You jumped in your armor and backpedalled several inches, trying not to scream. There it was, so close to the pile of junk next to it that you hadn't noticed it at all. The corpse had obviously not been lying there long; its congealed blood still lay glistening on its tattered jacket, gathering in a puddle on the ground around it, forming a sticky trap. Its mouth was wide open in an eternal exclamation of surprise, its arms flayed out at on either side of its head, grasping at nothing. Its clothes, you noticed, were full of spots.

It took you only a second to calm down from looking straight into the eyeballs of a dead man. You kept staring at him as you crouched, even though you knew you probably shouldn't. You were biting your lip, your mind working.

Very carefully, then, you raised yourself up and reached behind you, toward the lamppost you had seen earlier. Slowly, afraid perhaps you might provoke the machine gun standing several feet in front of you, you unscrewed the light bulb from the glass chamber and brought it back in front of you. You then maneuvered the bulb through your fingers until you were holding the base with the very tips of your thumb and forefinger. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, you hand shaking a little, you inched the bulb forward, feeling through the air with it like an antenna, until it appeared beyond the edge of the pile.

There was no warning this time. The bulb simply exploded out of your fingers, the filament inside rattling with a clatter to the ground. Glass powder burst all over your hand, snowing the white tiles. You sucked in a breath through your teeth and quickly tapped twice against your radio. No, no, not gonna happen.

Atlas growled in frustration. "Damn it," he said. "That's the only way into the town. It's too soon for us to be stopped now!" You heard a tapping sound coming over the radio, as though Atlas was drumming his fingers against something. As you lie there on the ground, you slowly reached for your rivet gun, reloaded it, and brought it to your shoulder.

Atlas must have heard you. "No, no, don't do that, Delta," he said. "A rivet gun won't work on a turret. It'll be alright. I just need a second to think."

You only had to wait a few moments before Atlas rang in again. "Ah!" he said. "Alright, I've got it. This won't be a problem. To get past that turret, you just need to find a hack tool. It's a sort of device that will allow you to hack that turret and render it completely harmless."

Oh! That sounded great!

"There is a catch, though," said Atlas. "There's only one that I know of, and it's in the prison."

Oh. Goody.

* * *

You stared up at the facility in front of you, reading the sign posted above the stone gate. **SPRINGFIELD PENITENTIARY,** it said, all in black and bold, all severity. Above the entrance, you could see the main building looming up towards the watertight ceiling. The place looked like a cinderblock, a huge, imposing, stone block that towered menacingly into a stormy, oceanic sky. Spaced in equal intervals all up its sides were a series of perfectly square windows, many of them with bars in front, though a few seemed to be missing their bars.

The whole building, in fact, looked damaged. The bars in the windows, like I said, were missing or twisted or sometimes bent at odd angles. There was a single spotlight up on the roof, and you could see that it was broken, the glass shattered to reveal a gaping dark hole within. The barbed wire up on top of the gate was twisted and gnarled, meaning, in this case, that it was straight, and in some places it had snapped like cheap twine. Many spots on the building seemed to be chipped or weathered, and if you looked, you could even see scorch marks here and there. The more you looked, the more you saw.

It had been sort of a long walk to get back here. You'd had to backtrack the way you had come, past the fountain and main welcoming area, jogging to the left of the sign.

Atlas had filled you in on the way over.

"Springfield Penitentiary," he'd said, sounding as though he was reading off of something. "Once housed Springfield's most dangerous criminals… and any other offenders they could fit in there. Of course, not one of them is there now. A little while after the city sank, there was an explosion or summat, a Splicer attack maybe, and every single one of them escaped. Now, it's being used as a kind of slum house for Splicers that don't have anywhere else to go. It'll be dangerous in there, Delta."

Right. Danger. Nothing new.

"The hack tool should be in the warden's office, on the top floor," said Atlas. "Get up there, grab it, and get back down without getting killed. Should be simple enough."

Now you were looking up at it, listening for the sounds of destitute Splicers scrambling around. You didn't hear any, and that was the most chilling.

"Are you ready, Delta?" asked Atlas.

You nodded and walked up to the gate, keeping your rivet gun held in front of you. You looked down at the entrance and frowned, puzzled. The doors, it seemed, had been ripped from the front gate, leaving behind a square, open cavity. Laying across the bottom of the entrance was a small wall of pillows, white, lumpy, dusty pillows, apparently stacked in some sort of barricade. They were stained thickly in splotches of yellows and browns. Not knowing what to make of this, you swiftly kicked them down with your boot and stepped over them.

Now you were in the courtyard. The wall that began at the front gate continued, encircling the perimeter with gray, stone arms. Looking around, you noticed, to your bafflement, a huge gaping hole that had apparently been blown in the side of the wall, a little behind the building. There was nobody visible here, either.

There didn't seem to be any kind of door on the building proper either. You stopped inside and took a moment to squint your eyes, adjusting them to the darkness. The light spilling behind you from the doorway gave an eerie look to everything, and you became filled with the sense that the entire prison must've known you were there.

In front of you seemed to be a sort of booth in which no one was sitting and, beyond that, a doorway leading into another area. As you walked further into the room, you noticed a security camera lurking behind the booth. But, instead of immediately whirring to life as you approached it, it instead twitched and sparked for a few seconds before jerking erratically up.

"Huh," said Atlas. "That's odd. Seems like someone else is using these cameras."

As he said this, you looked at the side of the booth and noticed, painted there in dark blue, the words: "BEWARE THE WARDEN." Just those three. You looked around nervously before hurrying on.

The next room was much larger than the first and much darker. Thick shadows hid the edges of the room from your sight, softening the outlines of the spaces. The light from your helmet fell on several different doorways spaced across the wall that all led into different areas. You looked at the label above each one. CAFETERIA, RECREATION, SOLITARY, SHOWERS (NOTE: Soap From Dispensers Only), INFIRMARY… You didn't see one that said, WARDEN, anywhere.

"Take the middle one, Delta," said Atlas. "Should say, 'HOLDING CELLS.' That one leads to the Warden's office."

The door he spoke of was directly in front of you. You could see a little beyond the empty doorway, to a slightly brighter space beyond. You nodded to yourself and headed towards it.

But as you did, you noticed a single thin thread, suspended about a foot off the ground. Bizarrely, it seemed to be flashing blue, sending off tiny little sparks of light. Not really knowing what it was doing there, you swiftly stepped over it.

And as soon as you did, you heard a bang, and something whizzed through the air past you.

You jumped and whipped out your rivet gun and began pointing it all around, sweeping your headlight from corner to corner. A shot! Someone had shot at you! Where? Where?

There! For just a split second, you saw a figure darting across the very edge of the light. Then it vanished back into the shadows and was gone. From behind you, you heard a clattering and scraping sound, which quickly vanished. You whirled around, whipping your gun madly from point to point, but you still saw nothing, save for the single square of blue-gray light, which seemed so distant now. You felt a chill breaking out along your neck. How many of them were there?

From the darkness came a voice, sounding harsh and rough, yet younger than the others you'd heard. _"We don't want your kind here,"_ it hissed darkly. _"Hit the road."_ It sounded almost like it belonged to a young girl. You heard more clattering and another shot, as the same voice cackled.

You didn't know what to do, but you needed that hack tool. Going back wasn't an option. You still couldn't see, but you figured it didn't really matter as you raised your rivet gun and fired randomly into the doorway ahead of you.

The effect was immediate. As soon as you fired, you heard a shriek, followed by a mad scrambling. Another shot sounded somewhere in the darkness. You responded with two of your own, fired into two different doorways. You heard someone screaming, and the movement around you ceased. You didn't think you'd hit anyone, but still, the Splicers were gone. You listened for another second before slowly walking through the door, a little on edge.

A single panel of fluorescent light was flickering above your head, lighting the room in painful twitches. The doorway leading to the cells was ahead of you; you could actually see the rows of bars beyond it.

But as soon as you stepped in the room, you heard a frenzied whispering and clattering echoing all around you. Briefly, on the other side of the doorway, you saw a pale face leering at you, before vanishing out of sight. _"He's coming,"_ you heard someone hiss. Another voice giggled in response, sounding like an exhilarated child at a slumber party. Through the ceiling above your head, you heard a cracking and scraping sound, and a stream of white dust was shaken from the ceiling and rained on down on your shoulders. You stopped where you were and looked fearfully behind you, wondering if maybe the hack tool was in a different room after all.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Atlas said impatiently, as the camera on the wall behind you reluctantly jerked to life. "An invitation? Go on!"

Beginning to hate him, just a little bit, you steeled yourself and headed forward. The doorway was right in front of you, you were almost there…

And then the second before you reached it, there was a rumble and a crash, and a huge cascade of wreckage spilled down in front of the doorway and formed a wall, completely blocking the cells from view. You stopped dead in your tracks, mouth agape, and stared at the impossible thing that had just happened.

Everything that the Splicers could get their hands on, it seemed, was stacked in front you. Prison bunks, the iron frames twisted, the stained and molting mattresses spilling out, pieces of rubble and stone, apparently torn from the walls, iron bars, a familiar looking chair, oil drums and gas canisters (how did they get those?), shattered mirrors, an upside-down desk, a _toilet,_ an honest-to-God _toilet,_ the piping still sticking out the back, even a vending machine, the neon clown flickering with a groaning final cackle from the dying speakers, all of this now formed the wall that you found yourself facing. There were even, you saw with a lurch in your stomach, a few bodies. A stiff, gray hand was sticking out of the rubble, palm down, fingers splayed out.

"No, _no!" _shouted Atlas, furious. "What have they done? Goddamn Splicers!"

Clenching your teeth, you gathered yourself up and rammed your shoulder into the barricade in front of you, but it showed no signs of giving. From the other side of the mass, you heard voices whispering. _"Don't let it in,"_ someone was whispering.

You whipped out your drill and revved it up, smashing away at the wall in front you. But it was no good. It still would not give.

"_There's nothing here for you!"_ your heard on the other side shout distantly. _"Get lost!"_

"Dammit!" Atlas was hissing through clenched teeth. "Dammit! We need that hack tool!"

You began smashing at the wall with renewed effort. Atlas sighed.

"Knock that off, boyo," he said. "It's not working. Hold on. Let me think."

You stopped, annoyed, glaring at the barricade as though hoping to disintegrate it with your stare. The Splicers beyond the wall had grown quiet, a few of them shushing each other or giggling through their teeth, but that was all. Both you and they, it seemed, were waiting, seeing what the other would do.

Suddenly, amidst the silence, you heard a light trickling sound. You looked down and saw that one of the dull red oil drums had been crushed slightly, and the shiny brown fluid was leaking out, spilling lightly over the rubble. You hastily took a step back as it pooled at the base of the wall, forming a growing puddle.

Atlas apparently saw it too, because the light from the camera scraped shakily over the pile and fell on the spreading pool. "Hey…" he said quietly, seemingly to himself. "That could… Agh, but… maybe…" He continued muttering and tsking to himself for a while, sounding agitated. It seemed like he was trying to come to a decision about something. Finally, he addressed you again.

"Alright, Delta, listen," he said, and there was a snag in his voice. "I've got an idea to get past that debris, but I don't think you're going to like it."

You turned to face the camera, puzzled, and waited. He sighed.

"Delta," he said, "I think you're going to have to splice up."

* * *

**AN:**

_It is time._

_Or is it?_

_Also, the water fountain is a statue of mermaid Mr. Burns, from the episode "$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)." It seemed fitting._

_Please review!_


	6. Cats and Dogs, Living Together

**6. Cats and Dogs, Living Together**

You were horrified. Splice up? After all that? After Atlas had specifically told you how foolish it was, how it had ruined every person, every building, the entire _city?_ You thought of the man in the Rejuvenation Center with his skin melted away. You thought of the nurse in the apartment, shrieking in anguish as the phlegm flew from her throat. You thought of the little girl, screaming as the Splicer stood in a whirl of insects, moving over her with her glinting hooks held high… _No!_ No, you wouldn't come to that! _Never!_

You banged twice against the radio, so hard and with such insistence it's a miracle you didn't crack it. Atlas exhaled through his teeth.

"Look, boyo, I know it looks bad-"

No!

"I know what you're thinking, boyo, but if you could give me two seconds-"

No! No!

"Boyo, please-"

_No!_

"Delta!" Atlas shouted. _"Listen to me!"_

That last was said with such force and such desperation that you were taken aback. You stopped banging and looked up toward the camera, which was pointed squarely on you.

"Delta," said Atlas. "Have I ever steered you wrong?"

You chewed your lip and looked down. Had he? Well…

He didn't wait for you to respond. "Listen, Delta," he said. "I have no reason to lead you astray. If you don't make it, we're both doomed. I am in a position where I _need _you to live. I wouldn't tell you to do something if I didn't think it was going to be alright."

You folded your arms and frowned, not quite convinced.

"I get that you don't want to," he went on. "Believe me; I get that. If I were in your position, I'd probably react the exact same way. Becoming a Splicer doesn't exactly sound like a great investment."

Like hell it didn't!

"And I know what you're thinking. 'It's just a bunch of junk. No big deal! If I just keep smashin' away at it, then eventually I'll get through!" But, honestly Delta, it's not just about the barricade… It's what's on the other side of it.

"Every other person in this city has already spliced up. The men. The women. Even some of the kids. And that means everybody's got an advantage that you don't. Look at you, Delta. You've got so many things they haven't. Good weapons. Combat training. A sound mind. And you can still barely handle _one!_ They don't know mercy; they don't hold back! And if they get the chance, and _you will_ give them the chance," he snarled that last part, "they'll kill you _again,_ and then where will we be? I know you don't like it, but if you want to survive, you have to be like them. You have to be able to do what they can."

You didn't move. You couldn't. Everything he said… You couldn't deny it. But… But…

"I know you're worried," said Atlas, more gently now. "About the mutations, and the madness, and the…" He chuckled. "Well, the_everything._ But… I think _you _might be alright. See, I have a theory." He paused. "Want to hear it?"

You furrowed your brow. It seemed odd of him to ask. He went on:

"See, I've done a little research into the Little Sisters. The Gatherers, you know? And when they gather ADAM, they're not just collectin' it in little bottles or whatever, they've actually got to ingest the stuff. You know, tip it back and swallow it all. And it turns out that Little Sisters actually have complete immunity to ADAM damage. It doesn't affect them mentally or physically. They're drinking the stuff, they're up to their elbows in it everyday, and they're still perfectly normal little girls, or as normal as they can be, anyway."

You were confused. What did that have to do with you?

"Now, you're a Big Daddy," said Atlas, "So you were designed to hang around them everyday. With that in mind, it's not out of the question that you might have been exposed to some ADAM already."

Your eyes widened.

"If that's the case," Atlas went on. "Then you might already have some immunity to the ADAM, yourself."

You felt jaw drop slightly. _Might?_

"I know!" Atlas suddenly cried. "I know, it's a bit of a stretch! But it's all I've got! And if there's even a chance that you might be immune, don't you think you ought to suck it up and take it?"

No! No, you didn't! This was a complete waste of your time. Waving your hand dismissively at Atlas, you revved up your drill, preparing to slam into the wall yet again.

Atlas sighed and switched to another tactic. "Delta," he said. "Think of your Sister."

You froze. The drill on your arm sputtered and grew still.

"What will she do if you don't make it?" Atlas went on. "If you're killed, if you can't get to her, if you're stopped by something like a bunch of garbage, then where will she be? She's only a child. Without you, she doesn't have a chance."

You felt that longing rising up in your throat again. Your Sister… Me… Far away, I felt tears rise into my own eyes.

"I can't promise you you'll be safe from the ADAM," said Atlas. "But I can promise you that you stand a much better chance of ever reaching her than you would without it."

You stepped back and looked down toward the cracked floor, torn. Splicing, letting the thick red ADAM flow through your veins, the very idea was horrible. You kept thinking of the mutations, the ravings, the Splicers, the… _the monsters._ There was no better word for it. Monsters. Monsters that raved and frothed and screamed. Monsters that preyed on little girls. No matter what Atlas said, if there was a chance, even a fraction of a chance, even one possibility out billions that you might become that, then splicing was a terrible, horrifying prospect. It wasn't worth it. Nothing was worth that!

Except.

Except yes there was. There was something that was worth it. Me. No matter what, you had to save me. You had to. This was simply a given. There was no reason or thought behind it. It was simply a must. No matter what, the most important thing was me.

And, if there really was a chance that it would be okay… If there was just a chance… Then you would do it. After all, you'd already died once. Twice simply wasn't fair.

You turned toward the camera and, slowly, sadly, gave your assent.

"Really?" said Atlas, sounding astounded. "You mean you'll do it?"

Yes.

"Perfect!" he exclaimed. "Absolutely brilliant. I knew I could count on you."

Yeah, yeah. You looked toward the floor, your brow furrowed. So, what now?

"Alright," said Atlas. "So, let's get to it. Head down that hall on your left, there."

You did so, shuffling your feet a little, your drill swinging disconsolately by your side. You listened for any Splicers around you, but everything seemed to be silent. Just like in the rest of the building, the lights in here didn't seem to be working, and all was dark. As you walked, the red light from the camera faded away into the darkness, and you were left in the narrow hallway with only the white spotlight of your helmet for company.

"Now, what you're looking for is one of them ADAM machines," said Atlas, as you walked. "Map says there should be one around here. It should sort of look like a normal vending machine, except it's red, and it's got… sort of these… big, like, statues around 'em-"

The exact instant he said that, you felt your foot collide with something brittle, and you heard a cracking sound. You looked down and saw that the toe of your boot was embedded into the face of what looked like the large, porcelain form of a little girl. She was lying on her side, and seemed to be quite old. You supposed that her pink dress, her coquettish smile, and the ribbon in her hair were supposed to be cute or charming, but the statue had obviously been poorly made. The strange, iridescent coating on her surface was patched and dirty, and on places on her skin, her hair, and her dress the paint had come away, revealing an ugly metal brownness underneath. In addition, there was something very hollow about her pose and her empty smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. You lifted your foot out of the empty hole of her eye socket and stared at her for a moment before looking up toward the wall.

Leaning severely to the right against the wall was a large machine just like what Atlas had described: a vending machine in an odd shade of pink mixed with brown, which he had been charitable enough to call, "red." The machine had obviously been broken into a few times. It had been thrown quite angrily on the ground, and its shining silver interior had been torn open. Sparks were flying from it, and you could see several empty white shelves lined up in its inside like a ribcage. Another statue, just like the one you had stepped into, was lying in pieces to the left of the machine, evidentially toppled over and dismembered by somebody. By the light of your helmet, in dark, neon cursive on the front of the Machine, you could read the words, _"Gatherer's garden."_

From behind you, you heard a whirring and sparking sound as another camera jerked to life, and a crystal red light flooded the room. "Ah!" said Atlas. "Here we are. Didn't take long at all."

Yeah. Great.

"Well, have a look in there, Delta," he said. "See what you can find."

You never would have admitted it to Atlas, but your curiosity had been piqued. Just what exactly were you going to find in there? You took one more quick glance down the hall to make sure there was no one around (There wasn't.), before crouching down and rummaging through the machine.

It didn't seem like there was anything left. There were a lot of compartments hidden in its innards, more than you thought could fit, but all of them seemed to be empty. Disheartened, but a little relieved, you turned your head to the side and reached your arm deep into hole that had been torn out of the front, pushing farther than you thought your arm could go, and began to grope around in there.

Your fingers passed over empty shelf over empty shelf, and you were about to conclude that there was nothing left, that there was nothing here, before you felt your middle finger just brush was seemed to be a large glass bottle.

You froze, your eyes wide, and reached your hand in that direction again. No… There! No doubt about it. That was glass. And this time, it moved slightly when you touched it, clinking heavily against the metal interior, so, evidentially, it was not part of the machine. Could this be it?

You pulled at your arm and contemplated the machine, the wheels in your head turning. Well, there it was. Now, how to get to it? After a minute, you carefully removed the drill from your arm and pulled the rivet gun into your arms. Biting your tongue, you wedged the butt of the gun into the gap, wiggling it until it was as far as it could go, before pressing down on the muzzle and wrenching up, using the gun as a lever. Under, or rather, over this pressure, you felt the metal at the top of the machine buckle and begin to bend up over its ribcage. You lifted the gun out and wedged it in again, with more force this time and then roughly pulled it out. Again and again you repeated this process, wrenching, lifting, and whacking, before you felt the snap of an abused joint, and the sheet of metal peeled away and clattered on the dirty, cement floor. You lifted the gun away and looked.

There, clearly visible now in the jagged hole you had made, was the glass bottle, the size and shape of a very large apple. This bottle was filled to capacity with a glowing red liquid, that cast a lurid red haze into the ravaged interior of the machine. The liquid seemed thick, and you could see shadowy globs of… something moving around inside.

Immensely please with yourself, you reached in, and, with a few pulls and some maneuvering, managed to yank the bottle free. It was only just small enough to fit into your hand; your fingers were straining slightly as they tried to reach around it. Still holding the bottle in front of you, you pulled yourself to your feet.

"Well, what is it? What'd you get?" asked Atlas.

You turned the bottle around in your hand, spinning it awkwardly in your fingers, before you found a small label etched into the metal top. You read it to yourself before holding it up to the camera.

"Oh!" said Atlas. _"Incinerate! _Good choice, Delta."

You shrugged, grinning modestly. You didn't mention that it was the only one left. You then looked down at the bottle, turning it over again in your hands. So… now what? Were you supposed to drink it? Or…?

"Alright," said Atlas. "Now, we need to find a syringe."

A syringe? Oh!

"Don't know where you'd get one, though," said Atlas, musingly. "Maybe if you looked through a trashcan or summat…"

Without a word, you pulled the empty syringe that you'd found before out of your pocket, twisted the cap at the top of the bottle, stuck the needle into the little hole at the top, and, with a flick of your thumb, began to fill it.

"Oh," said Atlas, sounding a little confused. "You've already got a… Well, alright… When did you-?"

The syringe was full now. You lifted the needle from the top with a pop and dropped the half-empty bottle onto the floor. It didn't shatter as you might have been expecting, but instead landed with a heavy thunk and sort of rolled onto its side. You looked at the syringe in your hand, the red liquid sloshing inside, then looked down at yourself, all wrapped from head to foot in thick fabric and metal. How exactly where you supposed to…?

Instinctively perhaps, you looked down at your gloves, which were more intricate than you realized, and noticed, with a movement of surprise, a tiny round port on your left arm, just below the wrist. As you moved the needle toward it, a small gear in it turned, and the hole twisted open. It was just wide enough to fit the needle into.

You made a move to stick the needle in but then stopped and looked at the needle apprehensively. Wait. No one said anything about _needles._

"Alrighty," said Atlas. "So, just take a deep breath, loosen up your arms, and _jam it_ right in there."

You looked up at Atlas, making a face I don't think I need to describe.

"No, it's alright, boyo, go on," said Atlas, reassuringly. "It won't do that much to you… Besides rewrite your genetic code."

Oh, well, if that was all. You took a deep breath, pushed your lips together, and before you could think about it anymore, shoved the needle into your arm, and pushed down on the button.

You didn't feel much at first, outside of the prick of the needle as it slowly slid into your flesh, but as the liquid drained out of the glass container, you felt a strange, thick, warm sensation clogging the veins around the needle. It soon began to spread, down your forearm, growing steadily warmer, and as the inside of the needle ran dry, you felt it spread up your arm, to your shoulder, where it soon reached your chest.

And that's when it started.

As soon as the ADAM reached your heart, you felt a jolt as your whole body threw itself back, as if a massive weight had just collided with it. The feeling in your arm grew warmer and warmer until it was unbearably hot. And the heat kept growing. It felt as though your whole arm was being burned by a red-hot iron from the inside. And with every beat of your heart, the feeling spread throughout your whole body until every cell screamed in agony. You gasped and fell back against the wall, shuddering violently, and every jolt of your revolting muscles made the pain worse. The dark interior of the prison swam in your vision, as you felt the floor lurch under you.

"Steady, Delta!" you heard Atlas say, as if at the distant end of a train tunnel. "You're alright. Everyone reacts to the ADAM differently. Just keep breathing! In and out. That's it. Focus on my voice, Delta. Can you hear me?"

You could, barely, but it felt like his words were drilling a hole into your ears, just one more annoyance amidst all the agony. Your head felt like it was going to burst. You felt your stomach seize up and twist, as though a knife were being turned in it. You felt as though you were going to vomit, and you were horrified at the idea of throwing up inside of your helmet. You kept breathing, gasping for air. You felt stifled in your suit, in the warm, stale bowl of your mask, but you dared not remove it, and continued to drown in your suit, wishing it would stop.

And then, just as suddenly as the pain had come, it did stop. The warm in your veins faded away, leaving behind a steamy coolness. The pounding in your head stopped, and even the sharp pain in your stomach faded away. The room stopped moving and became still. Gradually, your racing pulse slowed into a stunned throb.

You sat there for a moment, feeling the blood in your ears, before sitting up and looking down at your hands. Underneath the metal of your gloves, you could see something glowing a dull red. You heard a faint hissing and sizzling sound, and in a stunned moment, you realized it was coming from your hands. As you stared, you noticed a feature of the gloves that you hadn't before, a large circle on each palm, and eight small, round pads, one on the tip of each finger. With the simplicity of moving a muscle, as if you'd meant to all along, you opened the circles on your hands, twisting the coverings on them and exposing them to the air, and instead of skin, what showed forth were ten glowing, orange patches, which flickering in the salty air, casting a warm glow on the dark and gloomy room.

"Well?" said Atlas. "Is it over? Did it work?"

In response, you stood up slowly, still looking at the flickering glow. As you focused on your hands, clenching the muscles in them, the glow reached higher, wavering in the air, and the flame changed from orange to yellow. You flicked both your wrists and flexed your hands and the glow erupted into an inferno, two bright flames in the palms of your hands. Your eyes lit up, both from the reflection of the flickering blaze, and with glee.

Oh, _wow,_ was this cool.

Eagerly, not really knowing what you were doing, but feeling like it was right, you extended your left arm and snapped your fingers in the general direction of the wall. Immediately, the air along the wall burst with heat, and a yellow will-o'-the-wisp flared up and scorched the cement before vanishing with a hiss.

Hot _damn._

"Well, Delta," said Atlas, "How'd you feel?"

You felt flippin' awesome, that was how you felt. _This_ is what you were afraid of? How silly! You slammed one blazing hand into the other, causing the inferno to flare up around your fist.

"That's the spirit," said Atlas, though something about his tone was odd. "Alright, you're spliced up, you feel good, so whaddya say you go back and _blow that barricade?"_

Blow it up? You were getting to blow something up? Without waiting another second, you bolted back down the hall, churning your legs as fast as they could go, grinning the whole way.

Soon, you were back in the foyer. The wall was still there and as impenetrable as ever. But in the yellow glow of the ADAM, it looked to you to be as flimsy as wet toilet paper. From the other side of the wall, you heard someone whisper, _"It's back," _as several forms scrambled around.

Grinning, you lifted up your hand and were about to snap, when you heard Altas say, "Wait."

You looked over at the camera, puzzled. Wait? Why?

"For safety's sake, why don't we try a practice round? You know, to test your aim?" he said.

You shrugged. Fair enough.

"So… let me see… What can we practice on?" The camera took a sweep of the room before halting on a small trashcan with an ashtray on top, standing against the wall just behind the camera.

"Oh, here we go," said Atlas. "Delta, see this waste bin here? Try to burn it from where you are. Try not to hit anything else except the waste bin."

You nodded and raised up your hand, prepping yourself. You squeezed one eye shut, and, with your tongue sticking out, focused your entire being onto the trashcan. After a moment, still concentrating as hard as you could, you snapped your fingers.

Immediately, the camera on the wall exploded into flames. For an instant it blazed, the lens cracking, the film inside snapping and boiling away, before a wire or something inside it burst and it flew of the wall, spun through the air, and, rolling, came to a halt at your feet. It was utterly charred black, and you could see smoke rising from it. The scent of burning plastic filled the air.

You stared at the camera, your eyes wide. Atlas was silent. After a moment, he said, "Okay, you know what? That was good practice. Let's go for real now."

You nodded and looked over to the barricade. Your eyes fell on the puddle of oil that had formed at the base, which had grown quite large.

"Take cover, first, Delta," said Atlas. "It's gonna get hot in here."

Quickly, you ran over the doorway that led into the main foyer and ducked behind it. Keeping to a crouch, you slowly peeked over the jamb of the door and looked to the barricade beyond. Squinting, you concentrated on the wall, took a deep breath, and snapped.

The explosion was immediate and enormous. With a bang that shook the building, you found yourself knocked backward off your feet as the barricade blew apart. Twisted and ravaged oil drums, chunks of vending machines, and, yes, even the toilet, came sailing out from the now thoroughly disassembled pile and slammed against the far wall, a few debris flying through the open door and clattering toward the sunlight in the open front doorway. From the other side, you heard a cacophony of screaming as the explosion cleared out the other side of the wall, too. From beyond the smoky doorway, you saw large flames hovering above the ground, moving frantically back and forth. All was heat. All was chaos.

Suddenly, a deafening blaring sound flared within the room as a hellish red glow began to pulsate beyond the smoke.

"Shit!" yelled Atlas. "The alarm!"

You had no idea what this meant, but you were impatient and a little strung out from the explosion, and you bolted through the scorched and ravaged foyer into the holding cells beyond.

What greeted you was absolute anarchy. Everywhere Splicers were running and screaming, their arms in the air, their mouths agape. Many of them were on fire, the flames alighting their hair, their clothes, their skin. They made no attempt to put out the fire but instead continued to run, screaming in anguish. A horrible smell filled the air. There were three floors of cells all around you, that extended far to your right. The cells that still had bars were closed, but many lacked them, the iron long since torn away. The barricade you had just broken through was apparently only one of many. There were dozens of piles of junk stacked haphazardly everywhere, all comprised of whatever the Splicers had managed to get their hands on. The explosion, however, had blown many of them away, and all matter of filthy debris was scattered everywhere. Many Splicers stumbled over it as they ran, and did not rise from where they fell. In this room, the blare of the alarm was defending, and the red light bulbs lined all across the walls cast everything in a horrible red glow that darkened the room more than it lit it. Everything was madness.

Underneath the screaming, the burning, the blaring, and the sobbing, underneath all of that you heard a sound that sounded like… gunfire? You looked, and when you saw it, a feeling of absolute horror came over you. It was a turret, standing erect against the wall, the red light on top flashing. It was whipping back and forth, working overtime. Every time a Splicer ran in front of it, it unloaded a barrage of shots into them. It never missed. A pile of bodies was quickly growing around it.

Now, you knew the reason for the junk everywhere.

At the moment, nothing was shooting at you. The turret, for the moment, appeared to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Splicers were running by it several times a second, and it followed one target for only a second before switching abruptly to the next. It frequently twitched back and forth, trying to shoot everyone who passed in front of it, looking for all the world like it couldn't make up its mind.

You had been safe 'til then, but you knew you wouldn't be for long. And you knew that going to the left was out of the question. You stepped to the right, where there was no space but only a corner with more cells, and were starting to think that maybe you should have some sort of plan, before the movement apparently alerted the turret, and it looked right at you.

You had a moment of pure terror. The number of Splicers was dropping all the while, and it was clear that no one was coming to your rescue. Out of sheer panic, you snapped at the turret, hoping, insanely, to burn it to death. The turret immediately combusted, the flames dancing around it, but, to your horror, it remained standing, still whirring and clicking away. It was clear that annihilation was eminent.

Suddenly, you heard a strangely familiar voice cry out:

_"Ernie? Ernie, where ya gone?"_

You looked, astonished. It was the same Splicer you had seen outside, his long weapon trailing idly by his side. He was alone, now, and as he stepped into view, you saw, with a jolt, that the left side of his face had been burned away, and his large, perfectly round eye shone like a coin amid the charred flesh. He seemed utterly bewildered, completely lost, and he kept screaming, _"Ernie! Where are ya? Don't leave me, you bastard! Don't leave!"_

As he was closer to the turret, it pivoted in its seat from you toward him, and, as though made impatient by the delay, began to unload itself on him. You began to maneuver to the right, expecting him to fall, but to your amazement, he didn't. When the bullets struck him, he remained standing, only jolting slightly with the force of the shots, and, shouting, _"Lousy piece of crap!"_ he raised his weapon to his shoulder and fired.

A large spear shot out, as before, but this one trailed a long, thin wire behind it. As soon as the point of the spear struck the turret, the wire flashed blue and the sound of a bug hitting a zapper filled the air. Blue sparks flared up amidst the burning flames, and the turret drooped, apparently stunned.

This done, the Splicer shouldered his weapon and began to turn. You saw the eminent danger and tried to leave quickly, but too late. The Splicer saw you, and his face assumed an expression of hatred.

_"You…"_ he hissed.

You didn't wait anymore. You pointed at the Splicer and snapped, but the Splicer seemed to know what you were about to do, and in an amazing burst of speed, rolled to the ground. The burst of fire missed him and instead struck the turret again. The turret shuddered in the heat, and the flames wreathing it grew higher.

You looked down for the Splicer, panicking, before another spear sailed right in front of your face. You ducked, and it struck the wall behind you. You stood back up, relieved, and pulled out your rivet gun, but as you did, you began to feel a fierce burning sensation on the back of your head. Instinctively, you crouched back down and looked and saw that the tail end of the spear had erupted into flame, and was spurting out a column of heat and light with the force of a rocket. You looked back toward the Splicer and saw that he was reloading his weapon. In another burst of panic, not knowing what else you could do but only knowing that you didn't want another spear shot at you, you rushed toward him and whacked him across the face with the but of your gun as hard as you could.

The blow was hard enough to break a man's jaw. At least, so you thought. But, to your astonishment, the only thing you seemed to succeed in doing was making the Splicer's cracked lips bleed. "You son of a bitch!" he snarled, before he raised up his left leg and kicked you in the stomach, hard. You doubled over, clutching your abdomen, and as you did so, he slid out from underneath you and jumped to his feet.

"Say 'goodnight,' tin daddy!" he hissed, before he pointed another spear at you.

At precisely that moment, a camera mounted on the wall just above his head sparked to life.

"Delta?" you heard Atlas shout. "What _the hell's_ going on? Why're there turrets in here?"

The Splicer in front of you turned at the sudden invasion of light and held his arm in front of his face, snarling in anger. It seems that since his lids had been burned away, light was bothering his eye.

"Dear God!" exclaimed Atlas, seeing the danger. "Hang on, Delta! Help's a-comin'!"

There must have been a click, like before, but under the roar of everything around you, you couldn't hear it. But, immediately, another security drone, the yellow lights on its blades spinning, flew into the room from the open doorway and began to fire rapidly at the Splicer, who snarled through his teeth, and began to fire back.

"There," said Atlas, sounding out of breath, "That should get him."

You took this moment to rise shakily to your feet, fighting down the pain. And as soon as you did so, the noise of the alarm all around you suddenly dropped down to a low hum before flaring back up again, and the glaring red lights followed suit, dimming quickly before growing bright again. It seemed as though the entire room had just taken a breath.

"Wha-?" said Atlas. What was-?"

He didn't get a chance to finish. At that moment, you looked up and saw, to your bafflement, another pair of security bots, heading down the length of the room from the distant doorway on the other side. But, instead of yellow lights spinning on their propellers, these had red. As you watched, they both flew over your head straight toward Atlas's yellow turret and began firing at it.

"What!?" Atlas cried. "No!" You heard a furious pounding and clicking in your ear, as though someone was slamming on a control panel as hard and as quickly as they could. "I can't shut it down! I can't send them away! There's someone else controllin' em! I can't-"

Both of the red security bots were shooting with all their might at the yellow one, and the yellow one, sensing that it was under attack, turned and began to fire back at the red ones. The security bots began to move and dance in the air, twirling around each other and unloading .50-caliber rounds into each other.

And utterly ignoring the Splicer.

It was at this point that the turret came back to life.

Your mind racing, you looked quickly from the turret, to the Splicer, who was looking at you with an expression like wolverine that sees a deer, and amidst everything else, you remembered this: that the Splicer was resistant to bullets. Whatever the reason, they could not pass through him. That's when it occurred to you: if you stayed behind the Splicer, you might have a chance.

So, not wasting any time, you lunged toward the Splicer and whacked him again with the butt of your gun. He cried out and stumbled backward, right into the path of the turret, which quickly dispensed a swarm of rounds into his back. He gasped, apparently in pain, and struck you across the face with his own weapon. It bounced harmlessly off of your helmet, of course, but the blow was still strong enough to send you staggering to the side.

"You nancy bastard!" the Splicer shouted, brandishing his weapon at you. "Fight like a real man!"

You didn't answer. The Splicer's blow had thrown you in front of the turret, and you quickly moved so that you were in front of the Splicer again. Your mind was still racing. It was in the midst of combat, when the adrenaline was pounding in your ears, that your mind was clearest. You realized two problems: One, the Splicer was faster than you, and more agile. Two, that blasted weapon. Trying, somehow, to get rid of both these problems, you seized the Splicer's wrist and hoisted it into the air. He was faster, but you were stronger, and he writhed helplessly in your grip.

It was a truly hair-raising moment. You and the Splicer yanking, tussling, each of you trying to throw each other into the path of the turret. It was almost like a dance. Above your heads, the security bots were engaged in a similar dance, except in their case, the yellow security bot was outnumbered and suffering horrible. A large plume of black smoke rose from its head, and sparks were flying from its body. Soon, the red drones would have beaten it. And when that happened… You didn't want to be around when that happened.

Suddenly, you were sure how it happened, perhaps the Splicer had wised up to the fact that you were afraid of the turret, or perhaps it was sheer chance, but whatever the reason, the Splicer was swinging _away _from you by his captured wrist, leaving you wide open to the turret. In a panic, you released the Splicer and tried to push him in front of you.

And that was exactly the mistake he needed.

He grinned, a horrible, ravenous grin that showed all his teeth, pointed his weapon at you, and fired. The spear came at you too fast, and before you could do anything, the spear had lodged itself in the side of your neck. Luckily, your neck was where you armor was thickest, so the head of the spear didn't reach your skin but instead lay embedded in the joint between your helmet and you shoulder pad. You let out a breath and were about to feel relieved…

When you noticed a long, thin tail jetting out the back of the spear.

Immediately, there was a sound like a bug hitting a zapper, and the silver line of the spear flash blue, and a jolt of electricity was running through your suit. Now, the suit was resistant to electricity, but as soon as the current began to travel through it, you felt as though you were paralyzed. No matter how much you tugged on your muscles, willing them to move, the suit stayed fixed in place, imprisoning you.

The Splicer grinned in triumph and reloaded, shooting at you with the same tail-trailing spear again and again. None of the other spears hit you; they only hit the wall around you, and you were about to marvel at the incredibly bad aim of the Splicer when we swung his weapon and struck you to the floor.

And that's when you realized that he hadn't been trying to hit you.

You fell sideways, and as you did, you collided with every single one of the lines that had been set around you. They all flared up simultaneously, surrounding you in their blue glow, and you fell to the ground, wrapped and tangled in them, your suit jerking and writhing against your will. You rolled over onto your back, and the electricity pinned you there, keeping you trapped in the wires to writhe like a fly caught in a spider's web.

You looked up, your heart pounding, and saw The Splicer shoulder his weapon and walk up to you with deliberate slowness, keeping his half-burned coin-eyed smirk on you. "Lights out, Big Daddy," he jeered softly, before he reached toward you, reaching for your helmet.

By this point, the electricity in the wires had almost died down. The electrical charge in a tripwire spear is limited, and it soon fades away. So, while the electricity still restrained you, as the Splicer delayed, your paralysis slowly faded. You knew you only had seconds. So, with a final burst of will, you clutched a loose wire in your fist and swung it towards the Splicer's face.

It collided against the burned and blacked side of his face with a loud sizzling sound. The Splicer screamed in pain and stumbled, falling to the ground, and he landed, in such a way that his face was lying directly in the palm of your open hand.

You gritted your teeth, and a yellow flame burst from your hand.

The Splicer screamed, but his screams were muffled against your glove, and the fire was quickly devouring him. With a burst of strength, you swung the Splicer, still clutching him tightly, and held him on his knees in front of you. The turret followed this movement and rapidly unloaded its stream of bullets into him. He continued to writhe and scream and claw desperately at your arm, but by and by his voice became more distorted, more inhuman. Molten yellow drops of something dripped from your hand, burning into the floor in front of his knees, and the bullets raining into him sent red drops of blood splashing on the legs of his trousers.

After a while, the screaming stopped, and the Splicer's movements became feebler and feebler, until eventually they ceased altogether. The horrible scent of charred flesh was even stronger now, and you wrinkled your nose at it, trying to swallow the bile rising to your throat.

You had no desire to see the Splicer's face, so you tossed him away from you as hard as you could, directly into the turret behind him. And, when the body had collided with the turret and spun away, the turret seized up, fell on its side, and exploded, the weight of the body coupled with all the other abuse it had sustained simply too much for it to handle.

Breathing hard, you shakily rose to your feet, tearing off the wires that surrounded you, which, as it turns out, were quite easy to break. As you were snapping them off, you happened to look down and noticed the Splicer's weapon, lying discarded on the floor. The Splicer had apparently dropped it. You stooped down and picked it up. Well, it was lighter than your rivet gun. And the ammo was bigger. Might as well keep it.

You looked up and noticed that the yellow security bot was looking bad now. A small flame had erupted from the top of it, and it was flying with a sort of lilted twitch. The red drones, it seemed, had almost beaten it. It was time to go.

"Staircase!" shouted Atlas, who had been shouting mostly unhelpful gibberish throughout the fight. "There's a staircase to your right; take it!"

You turned and bolted to your left, stepping over bits of debris and trailing several wires behind you. You did indeed see the staircase he was talking about, a severe cement series of steps that turned sharply to the left behind a wall a few steps up. You darted into the corridor made by this staircase and ran up the steps. The exact second you stepped on, eh, maybe the fifth step or so, there was a boom behind you as something small and hot exploded onto the prison floor.

This was the security bot.

You paused, halfway up to the turn into the corner, and cautiously looked behind you. The red security bots had apparently not seen you run off and had not come after you. They instead flew throughout the room and began to gun down passing Splicers, who screamed as the bullets sailed into them.

Atlas was beside himself.

"Turrets!" he was shouting. "There are turrets in here! Here! _Why? _This is a_prison, _for God's sake, the security is supposed to be _outside,_ not _in_ the bloody cells!"

You reached up and began to pull out the spear that was embedded in your neck, wiggling it back and forth to loosen it.

"And the security bots!" Atlas went on, and you heard a sound like a hand slapping against a cheek. "I couldn't control 'em! They just started firing away! And now they're killing the Splicers! I don't understand!"

You yanked the spear out of your neck and began to snap it into the weapon you had stolen. You were a little annoyed. You wished Atlas would stop yelling.

"Someone must-a tampered with the security system!" he said, sounding quite distraught. "That's it! That's the only explanation! Probably the ones who set up all those turrets, too. But who? Who would do such a thing?"

At that moment, you successfully fastened the spear into place with a click. Satisfied, you looked up idly from the gun, and when you did, you noticed something on the wall.

There, written on the wall of the staircase in what was evidentially black paint, were words you had seen before. Words that Atlas could not see:

"BEWARE THE WARDEN."

* * *

**AN:**

_Shit's getting real! Probably. Maybe. I don't know. It's late. _

_I tried to capture every player's mental response the first time they splice up. Did I succeed?_

_Oh, and a special omelette goes to whoever can figure out the joke behind the chapter title!_

_Reviews are appreciated!_


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